Sinead Norenius, Beautisol and HSN

Last Wednesday I was one lucky blogger because I got to meet the famous Sinead Norenius, owner of Beautisol and co-founder of iFabbo. I also got to meet her charming fiancé and partner Chris.  They allowed me to go back stage with them at HSN to learn more about how such shows are conducted on air. It was really cool!

Sinead & Chris

For those of you who don’t yet know, Beautisol is an awesome self-tanning product. It gives you a gorgeous, perfect tan without any damage from the sun’s harmful rays. It’s different from any self-tanner that I’ve ever seen. More on that later!

To begin with, we went backstage and started setting up their green room to prepare for the models coming in. For those of you who aren’t a geek like me (I was in drama club so I did do Props Mistress, Stage Management, acting, singing, lights etc), the green room is basically a dressing room. It’s where you go to put on your makeup, your clothes, your hair, have a snack or drink, practice your lines or relax before you’re on stage.

Chris gave me a tour of HSN so that I could see some of the stages, the copious amounts of lights, the stage crew, props tables, monitors, and more. I got to see a show that was on air and how they dovetail between the shows.

After the tour, the assistant producer came in to go over the stage notes with Sinead. I really enjoyed seeing how everything was outlined to help the flow of the shows.

Sinead and the assistant producer Chelsea.

When someone is live on the air, they have a little earpiece in their ears so that the producer can prompt them or give them extra information that might be vital to the situation. There are all kinds of cool monitors set up in the green room to let you see the live show, as well as the audience’s response to it.

After things were set up to their liking, Sinead took me around to the other green rooms (HSN is big so they have a lot of green rooms), to see who was there and meet various people. I got to meet her friend, one of the show hosts, Lynn Murphy. After Lynn finished getting ready, she came back to visit with Sinead in our green room and I got to speak with her a bit.

Lynn and Sinead. I LOVED Lynn’s purple shirt! It looked great on her.

Sinead also took me around to meet Deborah Lippman. That was so neat! She was very nice. She was getting ready for her show, so she was having her hair and makeup done at that time. I was excited because she loved my manicure!

Not too long after that Sinead and Chris’ models arrived and started getting prepared for the show. These lovely ladies put on the cutest summery outfits – the green dress and the pink and orange swimsuit (you know I LOVED this color combo!) to show off their amazing tans from Beautisol.

Sinead & Chris and the lovely models!

I mentioned before that Beautisol’s self-tanner was different than anyone I’d ever seen before. It looks like a dark chocolate sauce that you apply to the skin. That dark color is called a guide color, which lets you see where you’ve applied it so that you don’t end up a streaky mess.

In addition to the guide color, there is no scent. I know from listening to some of my friends lament about self-tanners, that they can be smelly. Beautisol didn’t have any discernible odor to my nose.

Finally, it didn’t turn them orange! The tan produced looked natural. Somehow the pigmentation used seemed to work with the undertones in the ladies’ skin to match them rather than go oompa loompa orange.

I was able to watch Sinead and her lovely models apply Beautisol to their face, arms and legs. They used application gloves for the legs, which made the color go on very uniformly. For the face, it looked like they were putting on foundation. It looked so easy and goof-proof that I think I could manage it and I’ve never even tried a self-tanner before!

Now, I don’t tan. I’m extremely fair skinned. If I go out into the sun, which isn’t good for your skin anyways, I turn bright red and I burn. I don’t think my legs have EVER been dark. But looking at the results from Beautisol, I’m sorely tempted to try it!

While listening to Sinead talk about the benefits of self-tanning, I learned a few new things. One, self-tanner covers imperfections in your skin, like scars. Two, it covers things like spider veins in legs. Three, if you’re using it on your entire body, including your face, it can eliminate your need to wear foundation and give you a healthy glow. What I found particularly fascinating about this is that she has a few different types of face tanners, depending on your skin type.

Sinead and me.

I had a fantastic time with Sinead. The ONLY thing I wish I could have done differently while there was to have a better cell phone signal so that I could live tweet / Instagram the event! I guess I need to leave T-Mobile!

I learned so much about self-tanning and all kinds of interesting things about HSN and doing live shows like this. It was such a great experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat!

You can find Sinead on the web at Beautisol, Self-Tanning Queen, Couture Glow, and iFabbo. Thank you so much to Sinead for letting me tag along with you!