…Because there’s no beauty in cruelty.
Today, I wanted to introduce you to a lovely small business run by a friend of a friend. VE Cosmetics is the child of Lynsey who spotted a gap in the beauty market. She will never use animal derived ingredients in any of her products, keeping the full range vegan and cruelty free. This not only includes not testing on animals or hiring anyone else to test on animals, but also not selling the products in any country where animal testing is mandatory – you’d be surprised how many ‘cruelty free’ brands still sell in these countries, participating in animal testing although they don’t personally do the tests themselves. To be truly cruelty free does cut products off from sale in some of the worlds largest beauty industries but sometimes morals are more important than money! This level of control over your products is the best part of running your own small business and there’s really no need to compromise on your morals and beliefs just to make more money…that you probably don’t really need, lots of us live within our means…spending more if we earn more. I think it’s important to establish your own successes – bigger isn’t always better and Lynsey’s proved that you can build a successful cosmetics range without letting go of your companys ethos and the very reason you started.
I find it so strange that make-up is able to be marketed and labelled as cruelty free even when it’s not vegan so Lynsey has strived for her products to be both, continuing with the aim to becoming a palm-oil free business as well, reformulating the few products that currently contain palm oil – I love that she’s mentioned this on her site. Cutting out these ingredients can be really difficult – costly financially and with time spent on recipes and ingredient research but not enough companies in the beauty industry are honest about where they are or where they are headed. Lynsey is also working really hard to use all recyclable and plastic free materials (as difficult as it sounds!) and whilst most is easily recycled, anything not recyclable at your local authorities can be recycled at a Terracycle point or even shipped back to VE Cosmetics and Lynsey will do this for you, crediting the postage off of your next order which I think is a lovely touch!
My fave thing that I noticed with VE Cosmetics is that they don’t use Photoshop in their stock and promo images. SO many make-up companies completely Photoshop the way their make-up looks on skin and in my opinion, it’s false advertising really – like boxes of hair-dye when you can see they’ve taken one picture but then just changed the hair to be 30 different shades…It’s so weird! I’m much more trusting in the quality of a product from an honest company like this, if you don’t think your product is good enough and needs Photoshop to brighten pigments etc then spend your time making the product better rather than just photoshopping it to be so.
Enough about the companys ethos, Lynseys products really do speak for themselves. She has a huge variety of products – not just cosmetics – but I wanted to showcase a few of her best beauty items. On her store you’ll find everything from eye-shadow to primers, eye-liners and mascara to rainbow brushes and not forgetting her striking palette collection. If you follow me on social media, you’ve probably seen the Blood Moon liquid matte lipstick I wear sometimes as every time I do I get bombarded with questions about where to find it!
With palettes ranging from £15 to £48, they are very affordable, including bright, striking colours like Frankly A Rainbow that swatch up beautifully bright on any skin tones. Palettes like Earthlings come with complimenting tones and glitter and the huge 14 colour #Gothlife comes in a magnetic palette meaning, not only can you refill and rearrange the palette to your own design without having to bin the casing, you’ll also get £103.86 of product for only £48 when bought in this set, but there are some cheaper options on the store if you’re on a budget. Alternatively, you can buy the empty palette and fill it gradually yourself if you’d rather build your collection slowly.
VE Cosmetics also produce a stunning array of liners, from classic black Feline Good to a series of brights, including ‘Candyfloss’ pink, ‘VGang’ green and a super bright ‘Banana’ yellow – you can view them all swatched here! I have the black liner she kindly gifted me to try and I love it! It’s so easy to apply, it has that soft felt tip style end but is still firm which makes it much easier to be precise when drawing flicks!
My favourite product from VE Cosmetics has to be my Blood Moon lipstick I mentioned earlier and these are available in an unimaginable amount of colours – I had no idea! From stunning, pin-up reds like Bite Me Liquid Matte (with other options in moisturising and metallic lips) to Gingerbread (Liquid Metallic) plus the Unicorn Goo metallic tones that are all gorgeous – found in copper, rose gold, teal, lilac and other tones. There’s even a super deep black for all those real life goths out there, moisturising Black Hole.
Aside from making fabulous vegan, cruelty free beauty products – the names of some of them are enough to force you to buy them alone! Griffin Tears highlight drops beside Unicorn Tears – including ‘Drunk Unicorn’ – can be applied using their very own brush Highlight With The Blood Of Your Enemies – I personally have the Mother Of All Rainbows brush that I use to apply powder, not only does it look great but it’s super soft and doesn’t disperse brush hairs all over my face like my previous one managed to!
Don’t forget to check out my recent beauty Blogs, including a look at SO JUST and their zero waste beauty box, Primal Suds all vegan soap, Lush naked skincare range and Greedy Lamas beauty box subscription.
All the products pictured here were gifted by VE Cosmetics for the purpose of review and giveaway – aside from Blood Moon liquid matte which was already mine. All opinions are honest and my own.
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