IN THE PINK

Rea Ann Silva, entrepreneur and prominent professional makeup artist, is the Los Angeles-based creator of BeautyBlender (www.beautyblender.net), the hot fuchsia-pink, egg-shaped, edgeless sponge that changed how the world puts on makeup.

“I was a combination of naïve and persistent,” she says. “I had gotten a lot of very disappointing advice in the beginning. Lots of naysayers teasing me, saying, ‘Yeah sure, see you back on the set in ten years.’ Luckily, I ignored it all.”

Silva’s BeautyBlender won Best of Beauty from ALLURE magazine two years in a row, proving that the product was not just a trend item, but a credible tool.

Because the sponge is a rounded, three-dimensional oval, it’s superior to wedges or fingers for smoothing on foundation, concealer, blush and all the rest flawlessly. It’s brilliantly packaged with BlenderCleanser, a lavender-botanical wash to keep the sponge immaculate. The packaging even doubles as a platform for air-drying the sponge.

The applicator is “non-disposable”, meaning it will last for many, many uses. To keep spent sponges out of the world’s landfills, Silva encourages customers to send them back to her for mass-recycling when they do eventually give up their teeny, tiny, spongy-pink egg-shaped ghosts.

Silva and her creative team did makeup for hundreds of music videos before she broke into film, and before she laid this golden egg, figuratively speaking. She says that she had a few “unwitting mentors”, including Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was her client for 12 years. From an executive search firm perspective, his secret may now be hers as well—and may be inspiring to job-seekers in Southern California and beyond: “Laser-focus, and complete disregard for the word ‘no’.”

NEWS FLASH: In response to popular demand: new spring colors on the way for BeautyBlender!