It isn’t a good day in Hollywood unless the Kardashians have managed to tick someone else off with their uselessness, and it was certainly a good day today. The co-owner of Chroma Makeup in Beverly Hills has publically accused the Kardashian sisters of trademark infringement. The sisters have launched a new cosmetics brand and Michael Rey, Chroma owner, has taken legal action. Rey is claiming that the Kardashian sisters’ ‘new’ line is cheapening his brand, and is causing a whole lot of illegal and unecessary confusion in the marketplace.

This isn’t the first time the sisters have been entangled in legal woes, and it looks like they might lose this battle. Rey says it took him over twelve years to establish his brand, and now boasts an A-list clientele that he worked hard to accumulate. Rey is concerned that his clients will start buying from the sisters because of the similarity in their product. Back in February of this year, the sisters were slammed with a USD$5 million dollar lawsuit for their roles in endorsing a product called QuickTrim.

We all know that the Kardashians are infamous for endorsing an exhaustive list of products, from handbags to yoga wear. However, not everything they launch is cheap and useless. Back in 2009, using the model of the famous website Bagborrowandsteal.com, Kim launched the first she subscription site, Shoe Dazzle. The site was co-founded by her father, Robert Shapiro and M.J. Eng. In the last year alone, Shoe Dazzle has exploded from 3 million subscribers to a whopping 13 million. As Kim as the chief stylist, it seems that every shoe she touches turns to gold!

Their new make-up line is set to hit shelves at pharmacies and department stores across the country including Sears and CVS in November of this year. It is not known how much time and research the Kardashians have spent on their newest venture, but it might be all for not if they lose this upcoming lawsuit.

Many people find that they are unhappy with the look of their skin sometimes, and I am no different. Sometimes I feel like I’m wearing tons of makeup to cover up the imperfections, but I know there is a better way to get a complexion I want. This better way is known as microdermabrasion, and its easy! You take off the layers of dead skin and get rid of the fine lines and imperfections that plague your face. Because microderm is not nearly as harsh on the skin as dermabrasion, since it doesn’t go as deep, it is considered less extreme. That being said, it sill gives great results.

You can get treatments in a number of different places. Most commonly, it is done in a medical doctor’s office by a trained esthetician, but treatments may also be available in health and wellness spas as well as beauty salons, which is the route I went for my first treatment. It is important to choose wisely where you will go so that you can get the best possible results, so don’t just go to anyone. Ask around, choose the best place you can afford.

What Happened When I Got Microdermabrasion?

When you go for a microdermabrasion treatment, you will have your skin examined to determine how many treatments you will need and how long each treatment will need to be. She said most people will need anywhere between six and ten treatments, but that my skin was pretty good, so I could do 5-6 or maybe less. Each treatment was supposed to be 30 minutes to an hour long, and my first one came in at 50 minutes. My second and third treatments took about 40 minutes each. A single treatment will cost you about $100 on average based on my price checks. I paid $85 each by paying for 5 up front, and I went to a pretty nice place. They gave me a pair of goggles to protect my eyes and a wand with a diamond tip was swiped across my face to remove the old layer of skin. They told me I have to come back every 10 days until I see the results I want, then once a month or so to maintain.

I am so glad I went. The results were basically instant! My face felt smooth, my skin just sucked up my moisturizer like a sponge, and my makeup went on so much more easily! Many people seem to think that it is easier to just layer on makeup rather than to deal with the real problem. DON”T DO IT. Microdermabrasion is one of the best and easiest ways I was able to get immediate skin improvement. After adding up the costs, I decided to buy my own Riiviva Microderm machine I could just use at home. For the same price as a group of treatments, I am going to be able to treat myself basically forever. That was a no-brainer for me. Who doesn’t like to save money?

If this is something that you have been considering, go for it. You’ll have a bright, new complexion to look forward to, and you’ll thank me.

About a year ago, I strolled into a Bay (Hudson’s Bay Company for all of my American friends) in search of some new make-up. Actually, I was in desperate search for a foundation that was willing to work overtime to help cover up this new bout of adult acne. I was one of those teenage girls that you probably hated in high school, for a number of reasons, but one of them being that I had crystal clear skin. I could eat whatever I wanted, and I could wear whatever I wanted on it, but never once did it ever cause me any problems. Part of that was probably because I took really good care of it by eating really well, moisturizing it and never tanning, but nonetheless, those days are long gone and I’m now left with this new face that was constantly flaring up on me. So into the Bay I marched, and taking some advice from some of my girlfriends, I walked up to the Clinique counter. Now, let me just put this all into perspective for you. I didn’t own expensive make-up. The most expensive cosmetic item that I owned was probably a MAC lipstick, and I wasn’t even the one who bought it. I was a beauty store junkie who bought whatever was on sale, and I didn’t buy things very often because I didn’t wear a lot of make-up. So walking up to a beauty counter, like Clinique, and knowing full well that I was probably going to pay an arm, a leg, and my first unborn child for a product, it was a major step for me.

I was really hesitant when I approached the counter. I immediately took notice of the light, minty green packaging that everything was wrapped in and immediately thought to myself, “hmmm, all natural products, I’m liking the look of this.” The masterful technique of packing and marketing hard at work right there. Ya have to admire that! So anyway, after circling the counter a few times, a beauty consultant approached me and asked me what she could help me with. I told her I had absolutely no idea, which was the true. I mean how do you know what to ask for, when you don’t even know what you need in the first place? It’s a bit of a conundrum isn’t it? So I told her my issue, that I had all of these bumps on my face that I would get every now and then and that I needed some way to make them disappear under my make-up, without feeling like I was a clown at the circus. And this is where I received my primer education.

Primer is to be thought of in the same way you would primer for a paint job. You apply it to your face before you apply your foundation, and what the primer does, is smooth out any bumps you have on your skin, or cover up any blemishes you may have on your face that the foundation might not be able to cover on its own. There are actually different colors of primer, and one of the most effective colors of primer is green (there’s that green again!). Green is a color that helps to neutralize things like redness in the skin, or any burst capillaries you might have on your face, and even dark circling on your eyes. A few seconds after it’s been applied, your skin feels soft and silky, with a very thin visual film. Now you’re ready to apply your foundation for a bump free, flawless look! Yay primer!

I think I have a love-hate relationship with make-up. I’m not really sure where it started, but I think it probably has something to do with the fact that I had a mother who didn’t where very much of it, and she forbid me  to wear until well after all of my friends were wearing it! Plus, I wasn’t the kind of teen to rebel because I had mean, scary parents, so the first time I ever put any colour on my face was in the eleventh grade, and I think I was already seventeen years old.

Learning to apply make-up was something that was especially difficult for me, because as I said before, my mother was no big help in that department, but it was also because I had a darker complexion than all of my friends and most of the make-up that was sold at my local beauty store was for women with light skin. I struggled for a very long time to determine what colours worked best with my skin tone, and I didn’t even know what foundation actually was until I started modelling when I was nineteen years old. My modelling career was a short one, only about four years, but it was a highly educational experience for me in so many ways. It’s an industry that’s incredibly unforgiving, but only if you let it. I was a total tomboy, and it never really bothered me that all the fourteen year old girls that were on a shoot with me, felt like they needed a pound of make-up on their young faces to look beautiful, I never thought I really needed it. But whenever it came time for me to get my make-up done by the on-shoot make-up artist, I really loved messing around with different colour palettes. And this is where my love for cosmetics grew.

Now, I said this is where my love for cosmetics grew, not where my skills were improved! When I was no longer modelling, I was a university student working full time, trying to do a degree full time. I barely had enough money left over at the end of the month to feed my cats, let alone buy expensive cosmetics, so I was constantly buying the cheapest beauty products I could. I used brands like Bonnebelle and NYC. I never bought foundation or blush, and my eye shadows were only ever bought on sale, and they were always the colours that no one wanted, so I learned to blend them to create colours that I liked. I realized after a few months that I was shelling out tons of money on make-up because the products that I was buying didn’t last very long, nor were they very good in quality. I was buying four or five eyeliners in a two month period, whereas I could just be buying two or three. And after a close girlfriend of mine sent me to a MAC store to get a make-up lesson, I realized that though it was okay to cheap out on some products, I was more often than not, costing myself more money in the long run! And after having my make-up done by a professional, with high quality products, I realized then and there that make-up application was much like tattoo artistry; You needed the right tools to accomplish the best possible outcome, and the higher quality the medium, the better the finished product.

I still use some inexpensive products, and I’ll be sharing some reviews of those products with you. But I’ll also be discussing different make-up brands, and how I think they measure up against each other, and whether I think they’re worth the extra pennies!