This poor little Michiganite was bullied throughout her time in high school, until one recent prank pushed matters too far. She was nominated for the sophomore representative in homecoming court, even though no one really wanted her to win. It was all a joke.

After crying for days about the situation, to the point of contemplating suicide, Whitney decided that she wasn’t going to let the bullies control her life anymore. She received a free makeover from a local salon, along with a beautiful dress to wear on the big day. When homecoming came, Whitney shocked the audience with her transformation.

Whitney’s courage made her shine more than anything, but the new makeup and hair boosted her confidence and helped her sparkle. If you’re feeling down because of bullies in your life, show them what you really have to offer. Blow them away with your beauty, and then tell them to f*ck off when they finally support you. They don’t deserve your friendship.

To join Whitney in the fight against teen bullying, check out the Support Whitney Kropp Facebook page. 145,000 likes and counting…

Microdermabrasion Delivers Instant Results!

Most skin care products and treatments gradually produce results over a course of days, weeks, or months. However, after just one microdermabrasion treatment results are immediately visible. Dermabrasion enthusiasts and professionals state that the full benefit shows up between the third and sixth treatment. Also, a regular treatment regimen or schedule is encouraged to maintain your skin’s new look. The schedule should allow for one treatment once a week for the first four treatments. Following the fourth treatment, it should be performed once approximately every four to six weeks.

What are the Benefits?

The look and feel of the skin that results from a microdermabrasion treatment is amazing. It looks brighter and more radiant. The skin also feels softer, smoother, and more firm. All around the skin looks and feels healthier and younger. Though microderm is most commonly used as a treatment for the face, the procedure can be performed anywhere on the body. This is a great treatment to receive in preparation for swim-suit season. Not only will your radiant face catch some attention, but your glowing arms, legs, back, and stomach will be equally as worthy for recognition. Another great result of treatments is that the skin better absorbs moisturizers, make up, and other skin care products, making these products more effective. Because make up is more easily absorbed it goes on smoother and has a more natural look.

Quick and Easy!

Microdermabrasion is sometimes referred to as the perfect treatment for a lunch break. This is because a treatment only lasts about 30 minutes, causes very little pain or discomfort, and has a very short recovery period. Because the process is short and requires no pain medications it is easy to get back to work immediately. Following a treatment, however, the skin may look and feel slightly sunburned. The skin is usually slightly red and some individuals report a feeling of tightness. Fortunately, the skin fully recovers within about 24 hours, and the only special instructions for recovery include applying moisturizer and using sunscreen when avoiding sun exposure is not possible.

Only one instrument is used in a treatment. A wand-like device filled with tiny crystals is moved across the skin and releases the crystals to loosen the dead and dull skin cells. The wand instrument also uses suction simultaneously to lift away the exfoliating crystals and the dead skin cells; thus leaving behind a new, fresh layer of skin.

Costs and Options

Treatments are usually priced reasonably, but receiving regular treatments can become expensive. However, many recipients of the treatment feel the financial cost is worth the improvement in their skin and the boost in their self-esteem. The price of a treatment depends on several factors and may range in price from $50 to $500. For instance, if the treatment is performed by an aesthetician at a spa, it may be cheaper than if it were performed by a plastic surgeon or dermatologist. The area of the body to receive treatment also makes a difference in cost. Larger treatment areas, like the back, require more time and therefore are more expensive. Many people passionate about microderm are selecting to purchase their own professional quality machines for home use, like the Riiviva Microderm.

Stay Close to Your Natural Color

If you veer far away from your natural color, you are going to have really noticeable roots. That will force you to dye your hair more often than you have to. I have brown hair naturally, and it actually looks okay next to blonde or black hair. Some people aren’t as lucky as I am though If you have blond hair naturally, go platinum, strawberry, or something else along those lines. That way your roots won’t be that noticeable when they inevitably come in. the longer you can go without dying your hair, the better off you will be.

Use Permanent Dye

The word “permanent” may be a little scary, but it doesn’t have to be. Permanent hair dye isn’t going to fade over time, and if it does, it won’t fade much. It is harder to lift if you decide to dye your hair a different color, but it provides coverage that will last. If you are committed to the color you want, permanent dye will prevent you from going back to the salon every six weeks for new coloring. Then all you’ll have to worry about is getting your roots touched up, which won’t cost much money at all. See? You’re saving money already.

Go to a Salon

This may not sound like a way to save money, but it is if you look at the big picture. Box colors don’t last very long, and they tend to look like crap when you put them on yourself. If you go to a salon, you know that you are going to come out looking fantastic. Rather than buying a new box of dye every week and spending hours trying to cover your head with it, you can go to a professional and get something that will last for a month or more. At the end of the day, this is going to a much bigger bang for your buck.

Look for Sales

Some salons have promotions that offer discounts on hair dye. In my home town, Supercuts had a special every Sunday for 30% off hair dye. I used to go on that day just because I could save $20 or so on my hair. Look for sales like that in your area and see if you might be able to save money just by showing up on the right day. If you can find a coupon to use on top of that, you could be well on your way to a really cheap dye job.

Dying your hair doesn’t have to cost a fortune if you know what to look for. Follow the tips above, and you should be able to get a really good deal on coloring. All you have to do now is hope that the dye turns out well in the end.

When you start wearing a ton of makeup, you look like you are trying too hard. The whole point of this is to enhance your natural beauty, not paint on something artificial. You don’t need 18 layers of blush to make people notice your cheek bones. You just need a subtle highlight. The more natural your makeup can look, the prettier people will think you are.

I’m all for wearing dramatic makeup, but I also like to make sure that my drama looks like it was supposed to be a part of my face. I tend to go big on my eyes to make them pop, but then I keep everything else looking normal. If you can convince people that you aren’t wearing any makeup at all, give yourself a pat on the back. I think that is what we all hope for in the long run.

The reason I bring all of this up is because I see so many beautiful women just get lost in their makeup. They put on these big eyelashes and some thick red lipstick, and then they think they look good. In all actuality, they look like a drag queen with real boobs. If you want to step outside that stereotype, you need to learn how to subtly control the makeup you wear on your face. You may just need to master moderation.

Try to reduce the amount of makeup you put on in the morning, similar to how you might take one accessory away before leaving the house. You might actually be surprised by the positive responses that could come from the reduced makeup. My husband actually tells me that I look best with no makeup at all, and I can tell he’s being genuine. I just wear it for me Try my suggestions above to revitalize your face a bit, and see if you get any improvement from that.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because her hair color completely changed the way her skin and face looked (for the better). When you dye your hair, you have to be willing to adjust your makeup to fit the new look. Otherwise, you may be missing out on your true potential. Here are some tips to help you get the right look for your hair, skin, and everything in between.

Complementary Colors
If you have light brown hair, you may not look good with copper eye makeup. The hair color and eye color look too similar, but they are still different enough to not agree with one another. The same theory applies to a lot of other color combinations, so you just have to see what works for your hair. Try to find something within the same family of colors as your hair, and compare that to your eye color. If everything works out, you’ll have a great looking face that has everything working in its favor.

Feature Focus
What do you want the focus of your face to be? Is it your eyes? Your lips? Your fabulous hairdo? What? Pick one area of your face to focus on, and do whatever it takes to make that shine. Just make sure that the color you choose for your focal feature goes well with the color of your hair. You may not be able to pull off the bright red lips you want to wear because your hair isn’t the right color. The only way to know that for sure though is to test it out.

If you don’t like the way your hair color looks with any of the makeup you want to wear, you need to think about changing colors around. I had my hair in a really pretty strawberry blonde color once, but it made all the makeup for my green-ish/hazel eyes look funky. With black hair though, I can wear just about anything on my eyes and still look great. You can test out all sorts of looks for your hair and see what works for you. Whether you’re a flight nurse, a fashion designer, a freelance writer, or a female fighter, you can find a look at this going to complement your hair and features at the same time.

Common Earnings Based on Position
The specific career you choose to go with will make a difference in your overall earnings. The higher the position, the higher the possible pay rates. Here is a look at the money you might make in various fashion design positions:

• Technical Designer in Apparel: $29,590 – $82,480 per year
• Product Development Manager: $57,100 – $120,000 per year
• Graphic Designer: $30,500 – $52,500 per year
• Fashion Designer: $34,765 – $100,671 per year
• Chief Fashion Designer: $114,783 – $180,000 per year
• Assistant Fashion Designer: $29,361 – $45,095 per year

Common Earnings Based on Years of Experience
Experience is an important factor in your earnings because most employers will want to hire people who have been in the industry for years. If you are a fresh college student looking for work, you may not get a well-paying position right away. Over time though, you can show people your past work and land better clients in the long run. Here’s a look at how your income may vary with experience:

• Less than 1 year of experience: $30,500 per year
• 1-4 years of experience: $36,240 per year
• 5-9 years of experience: $54,977 per year
• 10-19 years of experience: $80,483 per year
• 20 years of experience or more: $75,000 per year

Common Earnings Based on Company Size
The size of the company you work for may not matter much, but it could have a slight influence on your pay rate. You might assume that larger companies will pay more money, but statistics suggest quite the opposite. In some cases, you may actually make more money by moving to a smaller company. You can see that here:

• 1-9 employees: $37,974 per year
• 10-49 employees: $40,604 per year
• 50-199 employees: $35,585 per year
• 200-599 employees: $55,000 per year
• 600-1999 employees: $63,000 per year
• 2000-4999 employees: $47,000 per year
• 5000-19999 employees: $49,617 per year
• 50000+ employees: $44,700 per year

Common Earnings Based on Location
Some states have higher paying jobs than others because their economies are better. If you land a job in a high-paying state, you may be able to make more in the long run. Possible earnings by location include:

• Wisconsin: $58,314 per year
• Texas: $38,446 per year
• Pennsylvania: $42,533 per year
• Ohio: $58,509 per year
• New York: $48,656 per year
• Illinois: $51,000 per year
• California: $46,602 per year

Think carefully about the earnings associated with fashion design and see if they line up with your goals. You may not be a millionaire right after college, but you should be able to make a pretty decent living in this profession. All you need is a good education to get started.

Curling Iron

The fastest way to curl your hair is by using a curling iron. This only takes about a minute to heat up, and it will instantly curl your hair on contact. The problem with using curling irons is the fact that they get really hot, which tends to damage your hair over time. Think about putting a clothing iron on your hair repeatedly. You’re basically doing the same thing with a curling iron. If you need a last minute curl though, this is a great solution.

Hot Rollers

Hot rollers are a lot like curling irons, but you have to put them in your hair like traditional rollers. They contain heat to make them faster to use than regular rollers, but you still have to put them in your hair and wait for them to work. I don’t like hot rollers because I usually burn my fingers with them, but they are pretty convenient if you learn how to use them. Just roll them up in your hair and take them out when they’re cool.

Sponge Rollers

Sponge rollers are the ones that we all remember from our childhood – the ones that our grandparents used to put in our hair before bed so we could have pretty curls in the morning. To use a sponge roller, you need to have semi-wet hair. Then you just roll them up, clip them in place, and wait for the hair to dry. Hopefully you will roll out some beautiful curls to call your own.

Braids

You can braid your hair to make it look curly, but this does not always work out. The best look I’ve seen from this was from a girl French braiding her hair when it was wet and taking it out when she woke up the next day. Even then though, she had to use a curling iron to fix some pieces that got kinked up in the pony tail holder. You can try braiding your hair if you don’t want to use any of the other tools on here, and you may be able to come up with an option that looks good on you.

Round Brush

Round brushes aren’t good for spiraling hair, but they can be used to curl the ends and smooth out the hair. When your hair is still wet, use a round brush with your blow dryer to blow it out in the curled perfection you want it to be. Follow the movement of the brush with the dryer so that the dryer is blowing the hair onto the brush. Do this all the way around your head, and you will have a salon style without having to take a trip to your hair salon.

In lieu of the fact that I have gone through the black to blonde transformation, I thought I may help you get a feel for how the process works. That way you can determine if you want to use part of your hope scholarship to pay for the process. Here is a look at what it takes to transform from a brunette to a blonde.

Find a Good Hairdresser

A good hairdresser can make all the difference in the success of your transformation. I have tried this process several times over, and it was not until this last round at Procuts that I finally got the results I was looking for. You need to find someone in your area that is experienced in taking black to blonde. Otherwise you will end up with white hair at the roots and orange hair for the rest. This is what happened to me at a Walmart salon once, and I ended up looking like I was unintentionally going for a candy corn theme on my head. It was awful, just awful. Do some research to find out who you can potentially work with in your area before you trust your hair to just anyone.

Prepare for Stages

In most cases, you will have to lighten your hair in stages. There are rare occasions when hair will go as light as you want it to go the first time around, but that does not happen often. For the most part, you will have to lighten two or three times over in order to get it where you want it to be. My hair is currently a caramel color because that is the lightest it would go without melting my hair off. I have to go back to the salon in three weeks to get it the blonde color I want to be. Just be prepared to have a slightly different color of hair than what you may wnt overall, just so you can transition into blonde.

Let the Black Fade (or Grow out)

If you can wait for the black to fade or grow out entirely, you are going to have a much easier time lifting it to go blonde. I tried to do this for about three months, but the black wasn’t fading and the hair wasn’t grown out. As a result of this, we had a really hard time getting the black out of the hair. If you have the patience to wait for the roots to grow, you will have a much easier time being the blonde you want to be.

Brunettes and blonds are sexy in different ways, so you really just have to figure out which one you want to be. If you want to be a blonde, you need to prepare to go through several steps before getting there. If you want to keep the black in your hair, just know the complications that may result from that later on. With all of the information above in mind, you should be able to make the best decision possible for your hair in the future.

The Contents of the Kit

The contents of your makeup emergency kit will depend on what you normally like to wear. Here is a list of what I have in mine:

• Tweezers
• Concealer
• Translucent powder
• Mascara
• Black and purple eye shadow (in a two pack)
• Eye liner brush
• Chapstick

You may have slightly different tools in yours, but you basically need something to cover the basics. I have the tweezers to pluck any unsightly chin hairs that may crop up, and I have the concealer to quickly touch up trouble spots on my face. The powder is just enough to set that in place without changing the color of my skin. I put a little spit at the end of the liner brush and dip it into the black eye shadow to create my own liner, and then I usually wipe the purple on my lids. I finish off with a little Chapstick, and I’m good to go.

The Holder for Your Emergency Kit

You don’t need more than a small pouch to hold all of your makeup in your emergency kit because all of your products should be travel sized. I usually use the travel bag that comes with my big makeup carrier, but you could use a Ziploc baggie if you had to. You just need something that can house everything you need and fit in your purse, car, etc. Believe it or not, I don’t carry a purse, so my kit has to go in the center console of my car. I’m with that car all the time though, so that is convenient enough for me.

You may want to get a holder that has multiple compartments, just in case you need to put nail clippers, jewelry, or other quick fixes in there. I have a cute little pocket on the outside of mine that I usually throw a pair of earrings into. These are pieces that I don’t normally wear but they’re generic enough to go with anything I may have on. Remember that we’re talking about the necessities here, not everything and the kitchen sink. Pick your carrying bag accordingly.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a college student out on the prowl or a parole officer scolding with a scowl, you deserve to look your best. If you don’t have time to do that before you leave the house, you should at least have a backup kit to fall back on. If you can do that, you will be able to spruce yourself up whenever something happens unexpectedly. Emergency kits are super easy to put together, so you shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money doing this. Any money you do spend will be well worth the investment in the end.

Earrings or Necklace, Not Both

You may have a fantastic earring and necklace set to wear with an outfit you own, but that is going to be counterproductive. You don’t need both of those elements to make an outfit look good. You only need one. If you try to wear too much around your face, you lose focus of your natural beauty. That is why it is usually best to choose. It may not be bad to wear studs with a necklace or a really long necklace with big earrings, but you can’t get too much going on around your face. That is going to make you look a lot worse in the end.

Color Matters

The color of your jewelry could impact the way your face looks, for better or for worse. It is no different than eye shadow colors or blush in that regard. If you have a red skin tone, red earrings will make your cheeks look super rosy. If you have blue eyes that you want to bring out, you can do that with some blue earrings. The jewelry could make your face look better or worse, depending on the colors involved with it. Think about the colors that work best with your face before you pick out jewelry to wear.

Location, Location, Location

The size of your jewelry will make a big difference in the way your face looks. That is because different sizes land in different locations. If you have really long earrings, you are going to make your face look longer. If you have some that barely go below the lobe, you will emphasize your cheek bones. The same applies to your necklace, which may emphasize your neck, your boobs, or your belly, depending on how low it goes. You have to find a way to get the jewelry to go where you want it to go.

Subtle Success

If you really want to make people see you for you, you need to make sure that your jewelry is as subtle as possible. You may only need a pair of diamond studs to add that little sparkle that your face needs. I wear the same necklace almost every day because it is subtle and interesting at the same time. Rather than overwhelming your face with gaudy jewelry, just keep it simple. A subtle dose of style will go a lot further than you think.

Don’t let your jewelry compete with your face, no matter what you do. If you think you look too over the top for where you are going, you need to take some of the jewelry off and re-focus your efforts. The last thing you need is for people to think you’re a drag queen when you’re really a network administrator. If you can learn to keep everything to a minimum, you will draw people into your face itself and hopefully drive them crazy with jealousy (women) or mmmm-break-me-off-a-piece-of-that (men). Test out this theory and see what it could do for you.