A 25-year-old makeup artist launched her first salon yesterday (Thurs) — inside a converted AIRPLANE in her back garden.
Amber Scott started converting the 1957 Air Atlantique Convair CV-440 Metropolitan in March to create Runway Studios which will offer makeup services and haircuts.
The plane was a gift from her parents, Andrew and Tricia, who bought it ten years ago for £25,000 to convert it into a luxury B&B.
It cost them a further £20,000 just to transport the plane from Coventry Airport, where they bought it, to Scotland, where it has been lying in their backyard ever since.
Converting the empty plane into a luxury salon cost more than £30,000 to convert the plane into the salon.
Amber, from Carluke, Lanarkshire, said: “I’ve just always loved doing makeup. I know it sounds stupid, but when I was younger I didn’t realise makeup could actually be a job.
“When I was 13 my mum and dad had a big Halloween party and hired a makeup artist and she was the one who told me to go to college for it.”
Amber studied at Clydebank College before doing an internship in New York with Vensetté and travelling to LA to learn from the best makeup artists at a trade show.
She added: “It was all of our ideas combined to turn the plane into a salon.
“I can’t believe how nice people have been – I’ve got loads of messages from people who live nearby that are just happy someone from the area’s doing this well.”
Amber gained more than 2,000 likes on Facebook overnight and hopes to hold Halloween masterclasses so that women can learn how to the popular sugar skull designs and fake blood themselves.
Her mum, Tricia, said: “I’m so proud of her. She’s really good at her job, it was inevitable that she would be successful.”
The plane has space for four makeup artists, two hairdressers and a nail technician, which Amber hopes to start hiring in the next few weeks after she gets set up.
Amber and her parents managed to keep the salon a secret for months, only telling their close friends just last night.
The plane weighs 22 tons, and lots of airplane enthusiasts have visited the backyard of Reynard Nursery over the years.
The plane has flown more than seven million miles, and Elvis Presley had a place of the same type.
