Introducing Cassandra Rae Ferguson, Professional Makeup Artist.

Cassandra has joined forces with AFW as a Beauty Editor. She will offer advice and reveal trade secrets in her monthly articles on Makeup Application, featured here on AFW. Cassandra Rae Ferguson is a Freelance Makeup Artist of over 8 years.

With a wealth of knowledge and experience in the Fashion, Film and Television industries, Cassandra has worked alongside many of Australia’s best photographers, fashion designers, stylists and cinematographers.

Cassandra is well-versed in Makeup Artistry and her accomplishments extend the Makeup industry. Since gaining qualifications in 1999, Cassandra has built a career from experience in Sydney and in Perth. She has worked on television programs, commercials, films and catwalk events such as Fashion Week and the Perth Fashion Festival. Her makeup design has featured in catalogues, magazines and calenders nationally. In addition to this, Cassandra’s roles include Makeup Instruction and Styling for Australia’s top model and casting agencies, as well as Beauty Editor and Columnist for various online Bridal and Fashion Magazines.

Cassandra currently resides in Sydney, specialising in Bridal Makeup, having gained a high profile in the Bridal Industry over the past 8 years. She is always happy to share trade tips and secrets with her clients. With the belief that makeup application should be fun, Cassandra aims to cut out the myth and mystery, without being dictatorial.

Therefore, Cassandra is delighted to offer beauty advice on All For Women. Cassandra will provide advice on all aspects of makeup application. Learn how to achieve different looks, use products/equipment and get great makeup looks on a budget.

Are you stuck in a makeup rut and need some expert advice, or would simply love to learn some insider tricks? Ask Cassandra!

For more information on Cassandra’s Makeup Artistry service, visit Cassandra Rae Ferguson

Keep an eye out for Cassandra’s first article coming soon!

Carnival of Australia

This fortnights Carnival of Australia has just gone up over at Meg’sBlogpond. A wonderful range of Aussie posts to check out.

One article in particular that caught my eye, then smacked me in the face as I read it was Weight-Loss Bullshit over at Craig Harper’s those who are struggling with their weight or are, dare I say it… FAT, or know someone who is should really take a look. Craig is an amazing wealth of information, his site is a definite must read for everyone. He covers a wide range of topics to help you renovate your life.

All Women Blogging Carnival

Welcome to this weeks All Women blogging Carnival ladies. There appears to have been a hick up with this weeks host, according to her blog she is away for the weekend so she won’t be back in time to post the carnival, so here it is.

This was the first week of our new submissions through the Blog carnival site, and we have had a great response. We’re still ironing out the details, but I think this way will be much easier.

So don’t forget to submit your articles for next weeks Carnival, which will be hosted at Uglymailbox.

Enjoy this weeks carnival, if you would like to host, or have any suggestions of the carnival, contact me and let me know.

Megan Bayliss presents Child Protection Week 2007. Bloggers Relay we Care for Kids by giving a Blog. posted at Imaginif child protection became serious business..

Sagar Satapathy presents The Woman Entrepreneurs Toolbox: 100 Networking Resources, Guides and Links posted at Bootstrapper.

Leigh Ingram presents Google, I thought we were friends? Google penalty nightmare posted at absoluteLeigh as well as see See…cats can talk! at crazy meezer

edithyeung presents Know How to Ask for What you Deserve and Break the Glass Ceiling posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act..

CountryStitchin’ presents Pink & green now finished plus some cats posted at Country Stitchin’.

Barbra Sundquist presents Sample Template for Your MySpace About Me Section posted at MySpace About Me.

Jenny presents Honey, I’m Home! posted at the so called me.

Tracy Coenen presents Did you see Sequence Inc. in the Wall Street Journal today? posted at FRAUDfiles.

artthailand presents The thing with blogs posted at artThailand.

Dana presents Bringing intergenerational experiences to the schools posted at Principled Discovery.

Vanessa Vinos presents Every Woman Should Have…….. posted at Musings from Vision Life Coaching as well as What I’ve Learnt So Far.

Career Counselor presents It?s Not Easy Being Green? posted at ask the CareerCounselor.

evelester presents How to be a Good Housewife posted at Confessions of an Everyday Housewife.

Madeleine Begun Kane presents Keeping Abreast Of Bras posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.

Michelle presents Start A Medical-Transcription-At-Home Career posted at MT Herald Dot Com.

Barbra Sundquist presents Women’s Retreat Inspired by SARK posted at Women’s Retreat Ideas.

arlan hamilton presents Any ‘Sex And The City’ fans? posted at Your Daily Lesbian Moment!.

Corinne Edwards presents DON’T WORRY - BE HAPPY posted at Personal Growth with Corinne Edwards.

dana presents Can Men Multitask???????? posted at First Time Mommy Chronicles!!.

Carol Telenko presents What’s Wrong With Being An Older Woman? posted at Mrs. Barnman.

Amanda Regan presents School Hell Memories. posted at The GOOD, The BAD & The MISCHIEF.

Tiffany Holley presents Genius Kids … Naturally posted at Life on the Road: Home Business, Homeschool, and Cats!.

Marilyn Terrell for Susan O’Keefe presents Are We There Yet? A Family Travel Report from the Road posted at Intelligent Travel.

Marilyn Terrell for Emily Haile presents Manhattan’s Old World Spa Treatment posted at Intelligent Travel.

Brigitte presents Une belle activité familiale posted at Simplement Bibi !.

JD presents I Am Working My Way through 31 Days of Blogging Tips so you don’t have to posted at I Do Things So You Don’t Have To.

Holly Ord presents Happy Birthday, EC! posted at Menstrual Poetry.

Silicon Valley Blogger presents The Perfect Hobby: One That?s Cheap, Makes Money Or Becomes A Business posted at The Digerati Life.

Amanda Harris presents SuperMom Issue #2 posted at Pajama Mommy Community.

Have a great week ladies, and don’t forget to get your submissions in via the new submit form for next weeks carnival!

We knew he was bright

The author of this guest post has asked to remain anonymous, we thank you for sharing your story with us.
“I have a child with special needs”.

Stating this in the waiting area of any school in Australia is bound to get you sympathy and a willing audience.

However continuing the conversation with “yes, you see my son has a high IQ, and the school just doesn’t cater to his needs” is going to make you about as popular as a blowfly at a Barbie.

Having an extremely bright child presents educational challenges, and yet it’s often hard to find support within the general community and within the school. A proclamation that you have a gifted child sounds so pretentious, that it’s almost a taboo subject.

Jay (not his real name), came into this world as a first child and a couple of weeks late. When he was two, he announced he hadn’t wanted to come out of my tummy, as he liked it there. I got goosebumps and wondered just how far back he remembered.

Being first born I didn’t really have much to compare him to. I joined a new mothers’ group – women who all had babies around the same age, give or take a month either side. It’s funny that I never considered Jay so much as advanced, but rather the others as a bit behind with the usual milestones.

He was sitting around 4 months, crawling at 6, and walking at 9. By 18 months he was putting two words together, and knew over 100 words and by 2 was speaking in 8 word sentences. These things are not necessarily signs of giftedness, or pre-requisites, but I mention them as they factor in the whole profile.

He was particularly articulate as a toddler, and we’d often hear the expression “he could talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles” and “he’s been here before” because he would just seem to know stuff that he “shouldn’t” have known.

Despite the fact that he “failed miserably” at cutting out at preschool, we decided to send him to school at 4 years 9 months, (an April baby) rather than hold him back for a year. I don’t regret that decision for a second, and think that holding him back would only have served to amplify the problems that were to come.

Kindy was a challenging year. I suppose combining immaturity with boredom didn’t create a good mix. This kid who loved watching documentaries and playing on his computer was forced to “learn” rudimentary facts and computer programs he’d mastered two years earlier. The school’s solution was to co-opt him as a peer tutor.

In year one, he was diagnosed with A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder). This is not surprising as I read once around 30% of gifted boys have the same diagnosis. Perhaps a common trait, or the effects of boredom, I’m not quite sure. It was at this time that Jay had his first IQ test, which indicated that he was “gifted” - to the extent that he was placed in the top 2% of children.

Apparently, this score didn’t qualify him as “gifted” according to the school he attended. The principal told me herself. In fact, she told me that they didn’t have ANY gifted students at the school (which was K-12 and over 1,200 students). I daresay she was right, an attitude like that would drive them away en masse. The mandatory “gifted and talented program” was poorly administered, and revolved around sporadic “thinking groups”, which Jay loved, or advanced reading programs, which he didn’t “qualify” for. It was a constant battle with the school.

It wasn’t until Jay was re-tested a year later, that we learned the true extent. You see the IQ test that was originally used (WISC-III) was not designed to be used with really bright kids. Upon being tested on the Stanford-Binet Form L-M, his IQ was calculated to be 180 – statistically (although not in practice) occurring at the rate of 1 in one million.

Whilst you think your first reaction might be pride, or joy, I can tell you I was shocked, shaking and numb. I turned to the internet, books, what ever I could get my hands on that would help me make sense of the situation.

That was even scarier. I read tales of socially inept children, doomed to be misfits and outcasts. Articles about how his curriculum needed to be drastically altered, that he would require radical acceleration, that if he wasn’t placed with “like minded” individuals he would suffer.

I obsessed about this for a couple of years. He went to three different primary schools (including a private school OC in years 3 & 4 and government OC in years 5 and 6). He also attended many weekend and holiday courses suited to his interests. While years K-2 were pretty rough going, years 3-6 were an improvement.

In the end, I learned to relax and not look for potential problems. I learned to simply be guided by whether Jay was happy, and to trust his judgment as to whether his environment was adequate. He didn’t want to be accelerated, and he never wanted to be singled out as being different. In reflection, I also learned a lot about myself and my own abilities, and how girls are very good at “dumbing down”.

I don’t mean to trivialise the situation. I think a lot of kids with high IQs do have a really hard time growing up, and many do yearn for acceleration and extra challenge. But I’m just saying don’t look for problems that may not exist, and don’t forget that each child is an individual so you can’t just “typecast” them in a “one size fits all” solution.

Jay is now a happy well adjusted teenager (I should clarify, “as well adjusted as your average teenager”!). He has a great circle of friends, and satisfies his additional intellectual needs through documentaries, books and the internet (via special interest forums and the internet friendships he’s formed). He does really well at school, in the subjects he likes. Those that he doesn’t like he coasts through. I know that theoretically he should be top of his class, school or state even, but he’ll come into his own one day. Perhaps he’s an underachiever, but he’s a great kid, and that’s what makes me the most proud.

And in case you’re wondering, Jay has three younger sisters. The eldest has an IQ “somewhere” over 145 (she hit the ceiling on some parts of her test), but we didn’t feel the need to get her tested on the SB L-M. As for the two younger ones - I don’t think we’ll even bother getting them tested, we know they’re very bright. The rest is just academic, really. Let’s just say that sitting through the entire 2 hours of the Lost Queen of Egypt with little Miss 5 brought back a sense of déjà vu.

Australian Resources
Gifted-Children.com.auNSW Association for Gifted & Talented Children (incorporating ACT)
The Queensland Association for Gifted and Talented Children
The Gifted and Talented Children’s Association of WA
Victorian Association for Gifted and Talented Children
Gifted and Talented Children’s Association SA
Tasmanian Association for the Gifted
Northern Territory Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented
Gifted Education Research Resource Information Centre
Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented

All Women Blogging Carnival #11

This weeks carnival is being hosted by Cindy over at Go workout Mom. I’m sure you girls know the drill, submit, link, visit and comment.

From next week we are going to switch to the traditional method of hosting carnivals. With all submissions going through the Blog carnival website. It’s still easy to join in, go to the submission page and fill in the form to submit your article. You can do this anytime during the week leading up to the carnival. Entries will close 5pm on the Sunday evening GMT+10 and will still be posted Monday morning. As the carnival grows, this makes it easier for me and the hosts to keep track of things.

So this week, still visit Go workout Mom and submit your articles to the mr linky. But remember you will need to use the submission page (bookmark it) to submit your articles for next week and beyond.

Still always looking for hosts for the carnival. Let me know if you would like to volunteer.

Have a great week ladies

Work from home in your underwear

This is a question that is asked quite a lot in the forums. Women looking for ideas on things they can do to work from home. Doing a search, you will come up with tons of information on working from home in the search engines, but a lot of it is nothing more than a scam and a waste of time and money.

The wonderful Wendy Piersall from eMoms at home has put together a great list of Top 10 Internet Home Businesses Ideas You Can Start and Run in Your Underwear, legitimate ideas that you can use to start a home based business.

A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking working from home and making money online is so easy. The saying “If it sounds too good to be true.. it probably is!” certainly applies here. Working from home can be a lot of hard work, but it can also be very rewarding.

Wendy offers some great resources to back up her suggestions. A must read for anyone contimplating working from home/online.

Top 10 Internet Home Businesses Ideas You Can Start and Run in Your Underwear

The best kept secret in Cosmetic Medicine-The liquid facelift

The ‘Liquid facelift’ refers to a TGA approved cosmetic treatment that provides facial rejuvenation, tightening and lifting without surgery. Considering the benefits, it is surprising it has not become a household name. So why haven’t you heard of it, what is this product and how does it work?

What is a ‘liquid facelift’?

liquid: the treatment involves injection of a ‘liquid’ collagen stimulating product into the skin.

facelift: the liquid stimulates skin fibroblasts to produce collagen where it is injected. The increased skin collagen results in tightening, lifting and filling of facial aging i.e. the sagging, folding and wrinkling we do not like.

Why has it remained a secret?

The liquid facelift has been approved for cosmetic treatments in Australia since 2002, it has a well established safety profile so why has it failed to become as famous as other cosmetic injections?

* TGA regulations in Australia restrict naming of this product as it is a class S4 medication to be administered by a Doctor or Nurse with training. This in part explains why you might not have heard of it, however these regulations apply to all medical cosmetic injections and some have become quite famous. No need to mention the B word.
* It has only been accepted for cosmetic use in America recently. This is perhaps the biggest reason. America has different regulations on advertising of medical treatments and they can name and discuss the product freely. It appears in the past it has been press from the USA which has fed us medical brand names and treatments. (Once it appears on Oprah the whole world will know about it.)

‘Liquid facelift’- what can you achieve?

Depending on the area of sagging and wrinkling or lines that concern you, the collagen stimulant is injected across the whole face, so a total rejuvenation is achieved. The product works over months creating a slow progressive lift of the face as new collagen is laid down.
• redefining of jaw line- lifting of jowls,

• filling nasolabial lines

• filling marionette lines and returning a new uplift to the mouth

• treating wrinkles across cheeks

• treating of wrinkles around the eyes

• refining the cheekbones.
In fact most grooves, lines and wrinkles, folds and sags can be filled,
tightened, plumped, lessened and rejuvenated over a series of injections.

The ‘Liquid facelift’: an affordable alternative to cosmetic surgery.

Comparatively a series of three treatments can cost about $2200 against $10,000 for a surgical facelift. The cost is broken down into smaller payments as you receive each injection treatment, making it more affordable to a broader group of people.

Superior outcome for many people.

With a surgical facelift the skin is pulled tighter, but it does not address the underlying cause of facial aging, the loss of collagen and other support structures of the skin
Many Doctors who use the ‘liquid facelift’ believe the outcome is superior to surgical facelifting for many people. Because it stimulates increase in collagen it addresses the underlying problems with facial aging: the volume loss.
For further information on this product Surgery free face lift

Or on anti-aging treatments in general Aging with beauty

Thankyou Leigh for allowing me to contribute to ‘All for Women’. If you are interested in further skin care or information on Cosmetic treatments visit our blog.

Dr Jo Turner
Skin Revision

Do cosmetic injections keep you looking younger?

Part two of our three part series on how the face ages and surgery free options to prevent progression of visible aging by Dr Jo Turner; Cosmetic Physician Brisbane. Dr Jo has her own business Skin Revision and Blog on skin care and Cosmetic medicine. Skin Revision

There has been controversy recently over very young people commencing with cosmetic injections in order to prevent progression of aging. Although I recommend you at least wait until you see visible signs of aging to start treatments, starting early does prevent progression and keep you looking younger.

Prevention of aging appearance.

There are two main groups of cosmetic injections available and the preventive action is different for each group.

Yesterday I discussed visible signs of aging and the key concepts of: movement…volume…texture

When you think of prevention you also need to think of these concepts.

Prevention of movement wrinkles- wrinkle relaxing injections.

Movement wrinkles develop because of repeated facial movement or expression, they start in the mid to late 20’s and progress to eventually become permanent.

Crow’s feet, frown lines and forehead lines

Repeated muscle action causes folding in the skin on the surface. Muscle movements that are repeated minute by minute, daily over many years cause defects to develop in collagen and elastin in the areas of folding. With loss of elasticity in the skin the wrinkles become deeper and eventually they will become fixed or fibrosed. When they are fibrosed no treatment will fix them entirely.

Muscle relaxing injections prevent the movement in specific areas, resulting in a smooth wrinkle free appearance on the surface. With these injections, over time, because you do not have repeated folding there is less ‘wear and tear’ on the skin and permanent defects are prevented.

Prevention of Volume loss –
Dermal fillers and collagen regenerating treatments

As we get less young our skin looses collagen volume (the main support structure for the skin) at a rate of 1% per year. This loss of volume results in sagging of the skin and we see wrinkles, lines and folds developing across the mid and lower face and thinning of the lips.

Temporary dermal fillers.

Temporary dermal fillers are used to rejuvenate lips (increase volume and treat lip lines) and plump our specific areas of collagen loss. (Nasolabial and marionette lines) Research released earlier this year showed dermal fillers do not merely plump out lines and folds but also stimulate skin cells to produce more collagen.

Although the extent of natural collagen production has not been measured, starting early with filling of folds, lines and wrinkles with dermal fillers means more natural collagen in your skin, less volume loss and a younger looking you.

Collagen regenerating treatments

More obvious in preventing progression of aging is a unique product that is injected into the skin and directly stimulates skin cells to produce more collagen. This treatment is referred to as ‘the liquid facelift’. The ‘liquid facelift’ is used for rejuvenation over the entire face, and because it stimulates natural collagen production it replaces lost volume and prevents progression of visible aging.

Tomorrow the third part of this series I am going to discuss the ‘liquid facelift’ in greater detail. I consider it the best kept secret in Cosmetic Medicine, because although it has been available in Australia for Cosmetic purposes since 2002, very few people have heard of it, and considering the potential for facial rejuvenation without surgery it astounds me it is not the name on everyone’s lips.

If you are interested in further skin care or information on Cosmetic treatments visit our blog.

Dr Jo Turner

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