If you read the Green Parent magazine, you may have seen that Lyonsleaf Beauty Balm won a gold award for Best Buy in their Natural Beauty Bible. I've been testing this balm thoroughly for several months now, using it to double cleanse at night as well as exploring its other uses, and I feel able to give an honest and thorough review of this wonderful product (I wholeheartedly believe skincare needs time to review, as first impressions can be so deceiving.)
It's World Vegan Month and I've not posted much at all - apologies about that! Today, though, I actually want to talk about some difficult grey areas which can happen when you're passionate about veganism as well as the environment. On the whole, veganism is a HUGELY environmentally friendly thing, but I'd love to chat about these points with you all and see where you stand on them. These are three divisive topics amongst the plant based community so please keep it judgment free!
I'm so excited to say that I wrote an article for the Green Parent Magazine Writing Competition and was awarded Runner Up! Click here to read the article on why I love cloth nappies. Thank you to all of those at Green Parent Magazine for reading my entry!
Since becoming vegan nearly four years ago, it's become apparent to me that some of my makeup is not! I've bought cruelty free for many years now but there's a catch - cruelty free doesn't necessarily mean vegan, and a product being labelled as vegan only refers to its ingredients and not whether it's been tested on animals.
This can be confusing and doesn't make a lot of sense, so there are definitely some products I own, mainly eyeshadow palettes, that could contain nasty ingredients like carmine. Personally I feel it's wasteful to throw these products out, especially as many of them were high end purchases, so I'm using them up but it has left me hunting high and low for cruelty free beauty brands that are clear about whether their products are vegan.
Enter Jolie Beauty. With their vast range of vegan products, they've been a very welcome new find. There's so much I'd love to try from their range, but as somebody drawn to witchy vibes, crystals and intentions all year (not just Halloween!) their new Sorceress eyeshadow palette couldn't be more up my street.
The packaging is beautiful - the deep purple palette and it's protective sleeve are decorated with the most beautiful illustration by Em Eato. The palette itself has a good sized mirror and is surrounded by gold detailing including the words "you look simply bewitching" for a really magical finish.
Designed to make you feel empowered and beautiful, the Sorceress palette is aptly named. It has a few neutrals which are useful for transitions but really the 28 shade colour palette is designed to create a fully transformative experience (that's half the fun of makeup, for me!) Unlike their other warm toned palettes (and let's be honest, the market has become saturated with those) this Gothic palette is predominantly cool toned - including some beautiful smoky greys, purples and greens. There are also some really unique transformer shades including Transform and Shapeshifter (both of which have a 3 way colour shift which is truly magical) Luna Eclipse, a duochrome, and Dreamcatcher which is an amazing pure black shimmer. There are also several pressed glitters which are perfect for finishing a look. There's a great selection of mattes, shimmers, glitters and duochromes creating a really versatile colour story.
My favourite thing so far to do with this palette has been to create a deep green smoky eye, à la Yennefer from The Witcher. The beauty of this being it can be quick and a little imperfect (after all I have a 17 month old!) but is still striking. Pressing Shapeshifter into the middle of the eye adds a little bit of magic to my everyday. To be honest, that's why I love makeup - it's not just about the way it looks, it can really transform the way you feel and for me the Sorceress palette is a perfect example of that.
For you, would this palette be for Halloween or for every day?
*ad - Sorceress palette gifted for review, all opinions my own.
If you read the Green Parent magazine, you may have seen that Lyonsleaf won a gold award in the Natural Beauty Bible for their Calendula and Marshmallow Balm. I've been testing this out for a couple of months now, along with their Zinc and Calendula nappy cream (a different variety also perfect to be used as a nappy cream) so I could give them a thorough performance review. I've struggled to find it hard an ethical, natural baby balm that we get along with so I was very excited to have the opportunity to test these products out!
