Fantasy Tan Page Two

So that I would be able to recognize them, Starr had emailed me their pictures earlier in the day. The picture of Starr, taken at a Marriott, where she spends an unfortunately large part of her life, is pictured at left, while Adele, in all her blond glory, is below.

In the last two years, Starr started another company, Fantasy Tan, which she owns and promotes — hence the vast amount of time spent at Marriotts all over the country.

But she met Adele before all that, through her face painting business. Adele had enjoyed a fast paced career, putting in long days and longer weeks. Her priorities changed when her son was born. She started working for Starr as a face painting artist, and now owns her own shop, Fantasy Tan Salon in Hilton Head [Starr owns and operates Fantasy Tan Salon, Too in Hilton Head].

Starr reflected on the reasons for the success of Fantasy Tan. "DHA is DHA is DHA," Starr said, so improvements must focus on application. While DHA has vastly improved in the last two decades, the application method hasn't. With the Fantasy Tan, Starr has come up with a lower cost solution than the Mystic Tan which she thinks will appeal to many.

After chatting non stop for almost two hours, we realized it was getting late and I would need to get my "tan" soon if we were going to make it out to dinner. We went to the hotel room, which was thoroughly covered with girl stuff: clothes, cosmetics, and mysterious things in cases.

I was given a whirlwind lesson in cosmetics application using an airbrush.

First, Starr showed me what the airbrush looks like. This particular model consisted of a compressor about the size of a coffee can, and a long flexible hose with a pen sized metal airbrush on the end. The sunless tanning solution goes into a small plastic bottle which attaches to the brush and is easily removed and refilled.

While it seems simple, you can't simply water down a sunless tanner and apply it with an airbrush and get good results [I proved this later when I destroyed my bathroom with the airbrush and some Jan Tana Show Tan, but that's another story].

[Caution: Do not get your Uncle Bob's airbrush out of the garage and experiment with it. Unlike the Fantasy Tan system, a standard airbrush operates at high pressure and can cause severe injury if used to apply cosmetics to the body].

Starr worked with her chemist over a period of nearly two years to come up with a formula [with bronzer and without] that works perfectly with the type of application an airbrush lends itself to.