The Green Beauty Guide: Your Essential Resource to Organic and Natural Skin Care, Hair Care, Makeup, and Fragrances (50 page)

Natural Eyeliners and Eye Shadows

While it’s really hard to go overboard and apply clashing, utterly unnatural-looking makeup using mineral and natural-based foundations, blushes, and mascara, mineral eye shadows virtually let you go nuts for color and shimmer. From barely there pastel hues to vivid, strong metallic pigments, myriads of color and texture variations of mineral eye shadows could easily be the one reason you convert into a green makeup junkie. Whether you want to go basic and classic with a single shadow accentuating the shape of your eye, or you are artistically inclined and feel brave enough to combine four shades into a sultry, sexy, smoky eye, you have all the cards.

Mineral eye glimmer and shadows are more intensely pigmented than foundations and blushers, hence there’s a higher risk of making a mistake. The technique is basically the same as with the mineral foundation, only the brush is smaller. Tap a pinch of eye shadow powder into the lid or take some on your brush and transfer onto your hand. Don’t apply loose powder eye shadows directly from the jar!You need to let the shadow penetrate the brush so that drops of dark eyeshadow do not ruin your foundation.

Mineral eye shadows can be applied wet or dry. With wet applications you can create an intense, long-lasting yet thin layer of color. You can use dark mineral shadows—dark gray, brown, purple, emerald green—as liquid eyeliner by dipping a pointed eyeliner brush into water (not saliva!) and tracing the upper lash line with a strong line of mineral color.

Mineral eye shadows can be applied wet or dry.

Here’s a trick of the makeup art trade: before starting an intricate, smoky eye design, apply a heavy layer of translucent loose powder under your eyes. When you are done with the eye makeup, simply whiff off the excess powder with a large brush. Be warned, though: the powder will soak up any moisturizer you have under your eyes, so fine lines may look more prominent. Sometimes, after you are done with the makeup application, you look closely in the mirror and realize that you need some dramatic measures to get rid of wrinkles. Moments like this usually make me run and grab a pair of sunglasses. But there’s a better way of hiding the lines around eyes. Simply and carefully dab some hydrating organic mist under the eyes to set the foundation and soften lines. Any floral hydrosol (steam-distilled flower water) will do the trick.

Natural eyeliners were invented long before eye shadows and even other types of makeup. Kohl, a mixture of castor oil, soot, and other ingredients, was used predominantly by Middle Eastern, North African, and Southeastern Asian women. Sometimes called surma or kajal in Southeastern Asia, kohl has been worn traditionally as far back as the Bronze Age.

Traditional kohl is made by burning a white muslin cloth soaked in sandalwood paste in a mud lamp filled with castor oil. The soot is then mixed with cow’s milk, butter, or castor oil. All the ingredients are believed to have medicinal properties, and they are still used in ayurvedic therapy. Organic charcoal can be used instead of castor oil soot.

Despite its natural preparation methods, kohl raised a lot of concerns in the 1990s, when commercial kohl preparations from Egypt, Oman, and India were found to contain as much as 84 percent lead, putting its users at risk of lead poisoning. Complications of lead poisoning include anemia, growth retardation, low IQ, convulsions, and in severe cases, death. However, those kohls are completely different from Western cosmetics that only use the term “kohl” to describe the shade and manner of application rather than its actual ingredients. Still, to be safe, purchase traditional kohls only from a reputable manufacturer.

Wearing kohl liner is much easier than you think—if it were otherwise, do you think that Jack Sparrow from the
Pirates of the Caribbean
film trilogy would spend ten minutes every morning on a shaky ship to apply kohl around his eyes? Traditional kohl is applied using a metal or polished wooden stick dipped into the kohl to color the inner rim of the eyelids, darkening lash roots so there’s no skin visible. This adds amazing definition and depth to the eye. You can safely experiment with Guerlain Terracotta Loose Powder Kohl in beautiful shades of shimmery black, brown, and teal, packed in a handy tube with a smooth metal applicator. To replicate a powdered kohl application, you can also use a well-sharpened black eyeliner pencil. I highly recommend Dr. Hauschka butter-soft Kajal Eyeliner. Soften the tip by quickly pressing it between your fingertips so it doesn’t hurt your eye if your hand slips. Close your eye firmly and quickly run the pencil between the closed lashes. I saw a girl performing this trick on an underground train! Of course, for the first application, you would need to steady your elbow on a table to avoid any injuries. A smudge of organic kohl, a coat of organic mascara, a dab of a natural lip balm, and you are all set for the day!

Green Lip Balms

Are you a big fan of lip-gloss? I’m sure you are. Millions of women (and thousands of men) claim they are addicted to lip balms and glosses. There’s an urban legend that blames a misprint on a little jar of Carmex balm for its widespread use. The original ingredients list put the word “salicylic” on one line and “acid” on the next. I suspect some people thought the wax contained LSD or some other illegal acid! While there are no addictive substances in conventional lip balms, most of them are still loaded with synthetic ingredients that do little to help our lips.

Our lips are protected by the thinnest skin on the body. It has only three to five protective layers of cells, while the rest of our skin has sixteen! This unique structure makes lips very sensitive—and very fragile. Our lips have no sweat or sebum glands, so there’s no moisture coming from inside. Technically, a slick of petroleum jelly works just as well to protect our lips as a layer of organic beeswax blended with jojoba oil. The only difference is what ends up inside of us: an average woman eats up to an ounce of lip-gloss a year, and we already know that liquid paraffin has become the main pollutant inside our bodies.

For the everyday protection of lips, natural lip balm is essential. Dry lips can crack and become sore, leaving the skin prone to infection. That’s why many natural lip balms are enriched with mild antibacterial and healing ingredients.

Green Product Guide: Lip Balms

If you don’t let nonorganic food pass your lips, why would you wear synthetic goo on them? Here are the top three natural lip balms of choice, as voted by 182 women questioned in July 2006 during a poll on Toronto Fashion Monitor (
www.toronto.fashion-monitor.com
).

Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm
is the green beauty’s answer to ChapStick. An easy-to-use, skin-friendly stick infuses the lips with plant oils, vitamin E, comfrey root, and rosemary extract. The only drawback is a strong presence of peppermint, which may be bothersome for sensitive skins.

Unscented Badger Lip Care
has proven itself as the most versatile balm out there. Because it’s made of virgin olive and castor oils in a beeswax base, and nothing else, fellow moms reported using it for quick touch-ups of their baby’s cheeks in winter and even smearing baby’s bottom with it when doing a quick diaper change in a coffeehouse restroom.

Weleda Everon Lip Balm
is packed to the brim of its happy little orange tube with healing plant oils and extracts, including jojoba oil, shea butter, and rose extract. It is on the heavier side, so you don’t need to reapply. It smells like roses in vanilla ice cream—enough to trigger an addiction in me.

Making Your Own Lip Balms

Finding a good natural lip balm is relatively easy. Preparing your own green balm, surprisingly, is even easier. All you need is a little bit of organic soy wax from your soy candle, an essential oil of your choice, and a bit of mineral blusher or eye shadow to add a delicate shimmery tint.

Golden Lip
Healing Balm

1 tablespoon organic soy wax flakes

1 scoop of coconut butter with a tablespoon

3 drops vanilla extract

1 drop chamomile essential oil

1 drop rose essential oil

1 pinch shimmery pink mineral blush

1 pinch pure golden mineral glimmer

Yield:
4 ounces

I find that beeswax-based lip balms go stiff and dry on my
lips faster than those based on other waxes. If formulated
incorrectly, when too little beeswax is melted with too much
oil, the wax can leave an unpleasant ridge along the lip contour.
For this reason, I like to experiment with other waxes,
like soy and jojoba, for my lip balms.

1. Place the soy wax and coconut butter in a metal tin from a cuticle butter or lip balm. Place it in a small enameled pan half-filled with water and double-boil until the wax mixture melts. Do not let mixture boil!

2. Carefully remove the tin and allow the mixture to cool slightly. Add essential oils and extracts and carefully swirl with a wooden toothpick.

3. Carefully spoon in the mineral pigments, adding each color one at a time to allow colorful waves of color to form.

4. Blend well and let the balm cool completely before using.

When combining colors of mineral pigments, be brave! Don’t hesitate to mix two or more shades of bright pink, mauve, or bright metallics. When you combine them in a single tin of a lip balm, you can create endless variations of natural-looking shades. If you come up with a particularly interesting color combination, you can make a larger batch of the balm and store it in a half-ounce glass jar, such as a container your eye cream might come in. Many online companies sell inexpensive, small lidded glass jars for lip balm use.

Basics of Green Lip Colors

Ten years ago, lip coloring was taken rather seriously. You had to use a lip liner, fill it with matching color, blot the lips, and reapply the lipstick. There were tips to make thin lips look fuller or pouty lips appear more modest. There was much emphasis on “correcting flaws” instead of appreciating your unique beauty and highlighting your individual features.

No matter how flattering, invigorating, and chic a red lipstick looks on any complexion, there’s a reason why I won’t be wearing any: I don’t want my brain to hibernate anytime soon. Many conventional lipsticks have been proven to contain considerable amounts of lead, and red lipsticks were especially rich in this toxic metal, according to a CNN report about the findings (full article:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/12/news/companies/lipstick_lead/index.htm
). Lead is a potent neurotoxin that accumulates in soft tissues and bone over time. As we apply lead-containing lipstick several times a day, every day for long periods of time (and aren’t we loyal to the perfect color we found once? ), it can add up to high exposure levels.

“We tested lipsticks from different stores, different cities, and different price ranges,” said Stacy Malkan, the cofounder of Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “We found lead in all of them. All of the lipsticks were reds, first of all, because red is an iconic lipstick color, and also because we wanted to compare all reds from all the companies. Some reds contained less lead; some contained more.” Lead salts in lipstick most often contaminate the pigment, the research found, but lead could also contaminate raw materials used to manufacture lipsticks. Other contaminants in conventional lipsticks include aluminum in the form of color pigments, and glittery particles that are created by aluminum powder and mercury that act as preservative and coloring agents.

When it comes to lip color, let the words “green” and “delicate” be your keys. After all, you want the focal point to be your lips, not what’s painted on them.

While lip-glosses enjoyed their well-earned fifteen minutes of glory and then shifted to the same style niche where skinny jeans and Hello Kitty handbags belong, lipsticks have made a glorious comeback. Yet finding a pure lippie today is as hard as it was ten years ago. We literally eat lipstick off our lips, yet they often contain potentially toxic components such as petroleum, aluminum, synthetic dyes, and colorings. Even with otherwise perfectly green brands, lipsticks often end up stuffed with silicones, parabens, and FD&C dyes.

Of all the organic beauty products, natural lipsticks feel the most glamorous compared to their synthetic counterparts. Natural brands avoid the use of petrochemicals by using natural ingredients such as carnauba wax, beeswax, jojoba oil, and shea butter. Instead of paraben preservatives, they may use vitamins and citrus oils. Instead of shimmering flakes that may contain lead, aluminum, and even mercury, they use mineral mica. Aveda lipsticks are tinted with organic, plant-derived pigment uruku, while other natural brands use mineral pigments that can deliver a deep, rich color.

Among the safe and pure lipstick brands available, Origins and Aveda (paraben-free versions) have the best selection of colors and textures, while Dr. Hauschka offers the highest moisture and glamour factor. Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmers are the most economical option, with pretty, wearable, slender lip products that are a cross between balms and lipsticks. Other perfectly green brands of lipsticks to try include U.S.-based Ecco Bella, German Lavera, and the new Australian organic makeup darling NVEY Eco.

Many natural lipsticks go to great lengths to use sustainable packaging. Aveda uses recycled plastics for lipstick tubes and recycled paper for boxes. They even have refillable lipstick cases! Canadian makeup brand Cargo introduced a line of natural-based lipsticks packed in tubes made entirely from corn. Celebrity-designed shades of Cargo Plant Love Biodegrable Lipstick are sold in boxes that grow wildflowers when planted. Now, that’s truly green beauty!

When choosing a lipstick, I recommend subtle, neutral shades, at least for daytime. You can stay neutral and still enjoy a range of options. If you have a yellow-toned complexion, you can use warmer shades, from pale bronze to warm rose. Olive tones can experiment with girly pinks and lilacs for daytime, but save deep berry shades for the night, adding drama to little black dresses. Dark skin tones can try rich chocolate and true reds.