It’s amazing what transferable skills you can get from working at your local theatre.

Who would have thought years of stage management, making props and applying make-up, would eventually lead to a career working with such brands as New Look and Olympus.

Deborah Stubbington is the woman behind hugely successful lifestyle blog, Bang On Style.

She says: “They’re kind of all interconnected but essentially I write my blog while also doing a bit of freelance photography and supplying content for a number of brands.

“Someone like New Look will email me about a line it wants to promote and I’ll put together pieces, photograph it and then place it on my Instagram feed and stories.”

It all stemmed from her lifestyle blog, which Deborah started in 2011, while she was still working as a stage manager for the Mercury Theatre.

She said: “I had a little online shop.

“It was called Bang On Vintage where I sold vintage jewellery I had made into head bands and necklaces.

“A little later I also started making these fluffy pom-poms, which had become really trendy at the time, and I made them so you could clip them on to your shoes.

“A national magazine did a feature on me and I ended up selling them all over the world.

“The blog was set up basically to drive traffic to my online shop but then it started to take off. I was doing fashion reviews, travels bits, writing about my life, while running the online shop and also working at the theatre at the same time.”

Deborah eventually stopped the shop and working at the Mercury, becoming a full time blogger in 2017, although she still helps out at the theatre.

She said: “I did the props for the panto. The jet pack for Jack and the Beanstalk was one of my creations.”

Born and brought up in Bury, Lancashire, Deborah has always been creative.

She said: “I get it from my mum who used to run the craft activities for the youth club but when I was growing up all I wanted to be was an actress.

“One time I didn’t get a part I really wanted and I thought ‘I’m not going to do this for living’ so I thought may be I would go into teaching.”

After going to Aberystwyth University to study English literature and theatre studies, at her interview at Manchester Metropolitan to take her Postgraduate Certificate in Education, she changed her mind.

She said: “I remember doing a module in stage management at Aberystwyth and the director of the show was so mean to me I cried at least three times but I gave 100 per cent and I thought rather than teaching, maybe stage management was for me.”

In her last year at university she did some work experience at an arts centre.

Deborah said: “My claim to fame was doing the follow spot for Sweep in the Sooty and Sweep Show.

“Then when I went back to Bury I got a job as an acting assistant stage manager which meant doing all kinds of jobs like making all the props and then being one of Captain Hook’s pirates mostly so I could herd the children’s chorus on and off stage.”

In 2004, Deborah “followed a fella” down to Colchester.

He said: “My boyfriend at the time had got a part in To Kill a Mocking Bird at the Mercury.

“By that time I had been touring with Northern Broadsides. We took this big West End style show to Cyprus, which we performed in the amphitheatre. But I was basically applying for all kinds of jobs, one of which was at the Mercury.

“Unfortunately I didn’t get it the first time but when the person dropped out, they rang me up and gave it to me.”

Starting off as a deputy stage manager, Deborah soon became stage manager and then eventually company stage manager.

She said: “I’ve done some incredible things while working at the Mercury, many of which has helped me in the job I do now.

“I remember some pretty crazy times like when I was walking through the workshop while they were cutting a caravan in half, and then having to upholster the inside of a coffin for its production of the Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

“Then there was the time we had to make 500 plaster cast statues of the Virgin Mary for the Lonesome West, of which 33 were smashed each night of the performance.

“But just being in meetings, coming up with ideas and working with incredibly creative people has all helped hugely in what I do now.”

Visit bangonstyleblog.com.