I'm Lucie Fink, I'm a video producer at Refinery29,
but every so often I like to try other people's jobs.
I'm spending the day with Chelsea White of
Chelsweets to learn the ropes when it
comes to being a food content creator.
This is Lucie for Hire.
Chelsea White is not your typical content creator.
Her subject is cake.
Layers upon layers upon layers of it.
I started making cakes about six years ago,
and it was really just a great way for me
to unwind after work and kind of have a creative
outlet from working in public accounting at the time.
Four years, over 600 cakes, and almost
650,000 Instagram followers later
and Chelsweets is still unique for most content creators.
Something a lot of people don't know about me is that I actually have a full-time day
job in corporate finance, and that Chelsweets is really just a side hustle for me.
It's not every day you meet someone with 650,000
Instagram followers, who says their Instagram
business is their side hustle.
Money, money, money.
When it comes to money I obviously still have my day job, where I do have a six-figure
salary and a lot of people I think would be surprised to know that with Chelsweets I make
almost twice my corporate salary.
Part of it is through ongoing partnerships with different networks, and then I also have
some revenue come in from advertising on different
platforms like on my blog, or on YouTube and
things like that.
My first challenge was to create the cake concept.
I'm a content creator of my own.
I'm making videos and telling stories all the time, but Chelsea's audience repeatedly
comes back for one thing and one thing only,
So, she needs to be continually innovating and coming up with the next big cake idea.
So, the first part of this is gonna be coming up with kind of the design and the concept
of a cake you're gonna make.
It's important to note that Chelsea typically
spreads her work out over the course of a few days.
One day after work, I'll make the layers,
another day I'll prep frosting, I'll get everything ready and then on the weekends,
one day I'll decorate the cake and film it and then I like
to usually edit it the following day, or the following week whenever I have time.
But for the purposes of this episode, she challenged me to do it all in one day only.
We began by brainstorming the way Chelsea
typically does pulling up inspiration images
online, and sketching out designs in a notepad.
We came up with a few thought starters, scratched
a few ideas, and then ultimately settled on
a holiday-themed present cake.
Okay here's our idea red buttercream Christmas
cake shaped like a package with a white fondant bow,
red, green, and white tie-dye Christmassy layers inside, this is it.
This is the one.
Alright, let's get started.
Let’s do this.
We got to work making the cake batter,
mixing all the ingredients, and then creating rings
of red, white, and green, that would ultimately make the inside of the cake look very cool.
So you wanna - yeah, get it like inside of that, and then it'll eventually start having
that really fun pattern.
We pop them into the oven and moved on to my second challenge.
Setting up and prepping for the shoot.
For people interested in creating their own food content, this part of the video should
give you some great insights into how Chelsea works.
So for my setup I really like to use two of these I call them, “umbrella lights” I'm
not sure what their technical name is but I think that's right, and I also have a tripod
that has like a pivoting head which makes it really great, because if your legs are
a little bit uneven, or your floor is a little uneven
which mine is, it's really great having on being able to adjust.
But that's all it is it's two lights, a tripod, and a camera that can shoot video.
She uses adjustable softbox lighting and a Canon Rebel t5.
And she keeps her lights set up in her apartment all the time for easy access.
It is always like this?
It is always there, my poor fiancé has stare at 24/7,
but there's nowhere else to put them,
so that's where they hang out.
I have lights like this in my bedroom, so production life.
Yep!
We work together to move them, and assemble the lights into the right position.
And afterward, we pop the camera onto the tripod, and made sure it was level and centered
with the cake stand.
I think that looks pretty good.
Yeah, it looks center, looks nice.
It's important to have all of the ingredients you'll need pre-prepped and ready to go.
So that once the camera starts rolling you're ready to work.
So we trimmed the cakes.
We got Lusweets in the kitchen today,
she is making moves, trimming some cake layers.
You called me Lusweets?
And gathered our essentials.
There is the fondant.
My third challenge was to shoot.
While filming these videos Chelsea's running the camera
and lighting by herself, but she's also the one in the video making the cake.
So she's managing the technical side, but also the creative side as well.
This challenge involved a lot of technical skills.
Firstly frosting a cake properly is not easy.
As I was working I realized how different Chelsea's job is from a classic cake maker.
She's not just making the cake and hoping the finished product looks, and tastes great,
but her art is actually the process of making the cake.
At every step of the way she needs to be aware of the camera, how low the battery is, what
the lens is focusing on, and if she's working
on an area of the cake that's within the camera's view.
How do you do it? Do I start from here?
Yep!
Exactly it's all about the reach.
This challenge took the longest amount of time,
but the final payoff was magical.
Once the shoot was wrapped, my final challenge was editing and programming the content appropriately.
I use iMovie to edit my videos, which is just a free software that came with my Mac,
it's super simple and straightforward, and I taught myself how to use it.
I'm usually only making like two or three cakes a week,
and to kind of help maximize my content and spread that out to fill my feed,
I like to divide each cake into one video of the build and the assembly,
and then another video of the decoration and the cut.
I chose to edit my video with Adobe Premiere since it's the software I'm most familiar with it work.
Thankfully I have some video editing skills from my job,
so I just pulled all of the footage into the software, and began cutting the clips.
I exported two versions the way Chelsea does.
One showing the assembly and frosting of the
cake and another showing decorating and the cut.
Stay tuned on my Instagram at @luciebfink for these videos.
My favorite part about being a food content creator is the flexibility, and I mean that
in so many different ways, where you can make your cakes when you want for the most part
partnership deadlines, you can try different designs, different techniques, there's not
as much pressure because you really have full creative freedom to do whatever you want.
You're not confined to an order or a certain
flavor that someone wants, so I really love that.
My least favorite part about this job,
and by job I mean being a cake content creator
has to be sometimes the negativity on social media,
you know you, people, don't realize
like how much time you're putting into something
and how much work, and I think it's so easy
to just like to make a simple statement and that's critical
and I just like doesn't make you feel like
your time and all of your efforts is really being valued.
Overall, my day as Lusweets was a major success.
My Christmas cake was not only beautiful but
it was delicious too, and I think my Instagram audience will love watching it come together.
As the sole proprietor of Chelsweets,
I would absolutely hire Lucie in a heartbeat,
maybe it'll be called Lusweets, who knows.
Chelsea is blazing the trail for female entrepreneurs
that want to build their business on social media.
She's true example of the fact that doing
what you love can bring you immense joy and financial gain,
and as we all know the cake is always the answer.
This is really good.
Hey YouTube, thanks for watching click here for another episode of Lucie for Hire,
here to subscribe to Refinery29 on YouTube,
and here for my personal YouTube channel.
And there's a car!