I always thought I’d end up working somewhere in the digital creative world—although, at the time, I didn’t even know what graphic design was. I just knew I wanted to design websites. In fact, part of the reason I took Computer Science in college was because… I wanted to design websites! I didn’t really know yet that there was this whole world of design around what I was imagining. I just thought: computers, websites—that sounds like what I want to do.
Life, of course, took a different turn.
I’ve told this story a million times. It was your typical romcom: I hated Java programming. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. But corporate life had other plans, and my first job led me straight to Java. And, of course, I absolutely fell in love with it. I got so into Java that I followed its certification path, eventually working my way up to a Java EE certification. Quite a turnaround for something I originally wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
That first job was a baptism of fire. Our team built a banking system, and it was hectic, complicated, and sometimes completely exhausting—but I thrived in it, in no small part because of the team I worked with. I still think of that first job as the foundation for so much of what came after.
That was more than 20 years ago.
What I didn’t realize then was that there was always a creative side of me running alongside the technical one. Makeup was one of the first places where that side of me really came out. I experimented with eyeshadows, colors, and different looks—not because I thought of it as some grand creative pursuit. It was simply something I did and enjoyed. I had always wanted to study makeup professionally, but for the longest time, I never really thought of myself as artistic enough to do it.
And yet, there I was.
At one point, I even tried the influencer route, as many of us did. I quickly realized, though, that constantly putting myself in front of the camera wasn’t really for me. So I thought: maybe I don’t have to be the face of the content. I could do makeup on other people, photograph the work, and create content around that instead.
That didn’t quite pan out either. Turns out, creating content is a full time job.
Eventually, I started realizing that maybe the thing I enjoyed most wasn’t necessarily being in front of the work. I liked making things.
And that realization would come back much later.
Tech & Makeup
Around 10 years ago, I started thinking about doing something on the side. I wanted to go back to one of the things that originally drew me in—building websites—and somehow combine it with this other thing I enjoyed (and admittedly spent a lot of money on): makeup. In my head, it was simply: Tech & Makeup.
And that’s how this logo was born:
And an Instagram post, straight from 2017!
Meanwhile, life kept moving. My corporate career in the U.S. evolved. I moved into management and leadership roles and discovered that I enjoyed those too—building teams, organizing complicated work, figuring out processes, and trying to make things run a little better.
In the background, I kept developing my makeup artistry. I trained, practiced, worked alongside makeup artists in San Antonio, and picked up clients and gigs here and there. Eventually, makeup became less of a business pursuit for me. I made one bigger push during a friend’s wedding season, but ultimately realized I wasn’t interested in building a full-time makeup business. I’m still available for very special friends and very special family, though. 🙂
But apparently my brain wasn’t finished combining makeup and technology.
The Apps That Came Before Penny
Over the years, I played around with several makeup-related app ideas.
I prototyped a marketplace for makeup artists. I experimented with a social network for makeup artists. I thought about a glam database. I bought entirely too many domain names because, at the time, I was convinced at least one of these ideas was going to become the thing.
None of them did.
Some ideas didn’t feel differentiated enough. Others simply didn’t hold my interest long enough to turn into something real. So they quietly joined the graveyard of side-project ideas.
In the meantime, Moonlippy Studios came about as my little web design and development studio. I eventually made it an official business, giving me a home for the design and development work I continued doing alongside my corporate career.
And for a while, I still thought of myself as someone who made websites. That was the box I had put around it: websites, mostly static things, design work here and there. At some point, though, something clicked.
Why was I limiting myself to websites?
I had spent more than two decades building software. I had been a developer, worked across the stack, moved into architecture, managed engineering teams, and led complicated technical programs. I could go all the way.
I didn’t have to stop at designing the website for an idea. I could design the experience, build the application behind it, think through the workflows, organize the project, and actually turn the idea into a working product. In a strange way, my entire career had brought me back to the thing I wanted to do in the first place—just with a much bigger toolbox.
I’m confident in the skills I’ve built over the years, but I also know there’s still so much to learn, both technically and creatively. And I think that’s part of what keeps this interesting. Technology changes. Design changes. The way we build things changes. I’m still learning, experimenting, and figuring things out as I go.
And then AI happened.
Suddenly, building and experimenting became dramatically faster. Ideas that would previously have stayed as sketches or half-built prototypes could become something tangible much more quickly. And somewhere in the middle of my doomscrolling, I came across a very simple problem:
How do I plan my day so I can do three faces before the event?
That was it. Not some giant revolutionary idea. Just a very normal, very practical problem—but one that gets complicated pretty quickly. What time does everyone need to start? How long does each person take? Who goes first? If you’re working with other artists, who’s doing whom? And most importantly, how do you make sure everyone is ready when they need to be?
And I thought: Wait. I know this world.
I’m a project manager, for goodness’ sake. Planning is in my DNA. I’ve spent a good part of my career organizing complicated work, figuring out who needs to be where and when, and keeping all the moving pieces moving.
And that’s exactly what a wedding day can be: people, schedules, dependencies, and a deadline that isn’t moving.
This was a problem I understood. And unlike some of my previous ideas, this one stuck.
That little problem eventually became Penny Palette.
Why “Penny Palette”?
Penny Palette actually started life under a completely different name:
Raketship.
It was a play on rocketship and raket—a word familiar to Filipinos for a side gig or hustle. In my head, it was a little launchpad for your business. I liked it. But something about it never felt quite right. And I really didn’t want to call Penny Palette users “Raketeers.”
Although… admittedly, that still sounds kind of cool.
Unfortunately, by the time I decided I wanted to change the name, I had already built quite a bit under the Raketship name. The refactor was painful. But in my head, Raketship was gone.
So what would replace it?
I started thinking less about naming a piece of software and more about creating a little character. If this app is going to help you organize your gigs, what if it felt like you had a tiny assistant keeping track of everything with you?
After a ridiculous amount of brainstorming, name experiments, and random combinations, Penny Palette appeared.
And somehow, it worked. Penny felt like a person. Palette connected naturally to makeup and artistry. And suddenly I could see her: the little palette with glasses, keeping an eye on your bookings and helping you get through the day.
Penny Palette had arrived!
And Now We See Where This Goes
Of course, the doubts are still there. What if the tools people already use are enough? What if somebody else builds something similar? What if nobody needs this?
Those questions can keep a project sitting in a folder forever. I’ve already personally built enough things that never made it past the prototype stage. I don’t want Penny Palette to be another one of them. So this time, I’m putting it out there.
Penny Palette doesn’t need to replace every tool a makeup artist already uses. It doesn’t need to solve every problem on day one. It just needs to be useful.
And then we build from there.
So here she is: Penny Palette — your gig organizer.
