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A completely unique service

Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Monday, March 21, 2011

THEBACHA/FORT SMITH - CosMedic Arts - a new Fort Smith business offering, among other things, permanent makeup, medical esthetics services and tattoo removal - will open on March 24.

The only medi-spa in the NWT is the brainchild of Robyn Hall.

She is optimistic and excited as she launches her new service, noting, "my business angle is completely unique."

Hall explained permanent makeup is basically tattooing, but not things like dragons and body art.

"It's makeup art, so you're permanently putting on eyebrows, eyeliner and lipstick," she said, adding its other purpose is camouflage for things like scars or irregular skin colour.

Hall can also remove tattoos without the need for laser treatment or surgery.

"I can get rid of it and actually the body will heal itself naturally so you won't even know it was there," she said. "It will just go back to what it was before."

She applies a product that goes deep into skin and pushes out pigment into a scab.

"The scab falls off and takes most of the ink with it," she said." Sometimes it can be done in one treatment, sometimes it might take two or three depending on how deep the pigment was inserted before and how wide an area it is. But the skin will heal to leave no trace."

A lot of people are already asking her about tattoo removal, Hall said. "My sense is that it will be a big part of the business."

She will offer free tattoo removal for inmates of correctional facilities in Fort Smith.

The other part of her business is medical esthetics, which heals scars, pigment and wrinkles.

That will include free treatment for cancer patients and burn victims for scar relaxation and removal.

"Part of the reason I'm doing this is I have an actual real interest in healing and helping," said Hall, who also volunteers as a certified emergency medical responder with the Fort Smith ambulance service.

She explained she has had a deep interest in makeup since her teenage years, when she had acne. Back then, she would create her own makeup and soaps.

A couple of years ago, she spotted a book about corrective makeup and anti-aging strategies at a used book sale at Mary Kaeser Library.

"It's like that proverbial light bulb," she said of the flash of inspiration upon seeing the book 'Makeover Miracles' by Michael Maron.

"I just saw this book and the miracles that it can transform for these people and that was it," she recalled. "That's what I want to do."

Hall said she was compelled to pick up the book and take it home.

"I knew I wanted to do it," she said. "I didn't know how. I didn't know it was going to be a business."

Hall, a former journalist who first arrived in Fort Smith in 2005, went to Vancouver to study and for an internship leading to certification.

"I was trained by a woman in Canada who was one of the first to do this," she said. "She's a film and makeup artist."

As the only person offering such services in the NWT, Hall hopes to attract customers from outside Fort Smith.

"I would hope that people from Yellowknife, Hay River and maybe even northern Alberta would be coming here," she said.

Hall specifically designed her services and treatments not to compete with other esthetic services in Fort Smith.

"I do not in any way compete with anyone," she said.

"I don't offer hair, nails, standard facials or manicures. I don't do massages. I don't do anything that anybody else is doing."

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