A good mascara is hard to find, as everyone who’s dabbled in clean cosmetics can tell you. It’s difficult enough to find a good dirty one, which is why when you do, you get all “you can pry it from my cold dead hands” about it.

It’s without question the one thing clean girls admit to “cheating” with—and I did too, for the longest. Until I found these two.

Last week, we started the conversation and I was reminded that I’ve been completely holding out on you! I’ve been using—and loving—two mascaras for months now without writing a proper review of either.  We also want to mention—though we can’t name names—that some of our favorite brands are also working on their own mascaras, so stay tuned for that.

For now, here’s the criteria a mascara must meet for me to love it and use it daily—instead of the Dior Show I still have lying around:

• It can’t run down my face when I cry or walk on windy streets

• It can’t run down my face when I don’t cry (which, yes, obvious, but anyone who’s tried lots of natural mascara knows this is not something you can take for granted)

• It can’t be too clumpy

• But it has to be thick enough

• The wand has to be awesome

• It has to last at least from morning till I get off work (I am of the opinion that reapplying for night is perfectly reasonable)

I’m happy to say that two—TWO!—mascaras make the cut.

The first, which I’ve mentioned before, is from 100% Pure. I have the navy and the black, and I use whichever is closest to the top of my makeup bag. I find it looks best if I apply Jane Iredale’s lash extender first, because the mascara itself is on the thinner side. The Jane bulks it up, which is a look I like, especially since my lashes are so pale, and so are my eyebrows. The wand is rigid, and goes on easily, without clumps. It doesn’t flake or melt, it doesn’t wear off or sting if it gets in my eyes, and the only times I’ve had any raccoon issues are when I wear it to yoga. I think it’s absurd to expect makeup to last through a workout, so in those instances it’s more of a “Why didn’t you wash your face before class, dummy?” as opposed to an “I can’t believe my mascara ran when I was dripping with sweat!”

The other one, from Honeybee Gardens, was brand new to me, and was introduced to me by our friend Shirley at W3LL People. She gave me one as a gift when I was in Austin, and I was blown away! The wand is more like the Dior ones I love: Thick and bristly, giving a nice heavy coat. It separates my lashes and lasts as long on me as 100% Pure does. I also just love the packaging: I find it attractive and look forward to putting it on. For night time, I like two coats of this, without the primer. It’s thick enough that I don’t need the Jane underneath. One coat is pretty for day, too. (It  contains phenoxyethanol, and I can live with that, for the simple reason that it’s otherwise clean and a great mascara is very, very hard to find.)

Have you tried either?

Here are the complete ingredient lists for both:

100% Pure ingredients: Organic Green Tea, Vitamin E (a-tocopherol), Honey Beeswax, Contains All or some of the following Pigments: Blackberry, Blueberry, Black Tea, Grape Skin, Pomegranate, Acai Berry, Boysenberry, Blackcurrant and Raspberry, Oat Protein, Wheat Protein, Provitamin B5, Seaweed Powder, Coconut Stearic acid, Mica (for shimmer in the Blackberry and Blueberry), Cocoa Butter, Pearl Powder, Rice Powder, Cacao Powder and Powdered Coffee Beans, Lavender Honey, Extracts of Oregano, Thyme, Rosemary, Lavender and Golden Seal

Honeybee Gardens ingredients: purified water, vegetable glycerin, beeswax, copernicia cerifera (carnauba) wax, vegetable glyceryl stearate, lecithin, vegetable stearic acid, safflower oil, glycine soja (soybean) oil (and) aloe barbadensis leaf extract, simmondsia chinensis (jojoba) seed oil, silica, cellulose gum, tocopherol, xanthan gum, chamomilla recutita (matricaria) flower extract, rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary) leaf extract, cucumis sativus (cucumber) fruit extract, phenoxyethanol. May contain: mica, iron oxide (CI 77499, 77491, 77492), titanium dioxide (CI 77891).

As I’ve mentioned in the past, toxic waterproof mascara is the last vestige of my dirty past. But there are better and better cleaner mascaras on the market, and this week Well+Good has posted some of their faves. (Note: Not all the ones they list get a clean stamp of approval, but the ladies at Well+Good point out the dirtier ones.) Next week we plan to pick up where they left off, and review a few we love that didn’t make their cut! Is your mascara clean? Is your favorite one on their list?

From the post:

Here’s a not-so-secret secret: Even natural beauty divas tend to cheat when it comes to their lashes, coating them in Maybelline Great Lash or lust-worthy DiorShow.

However, that’s beginning to change.

“Every natural makeup line is working on a mascara worth releasing,” says Spirit Demerson, founder of SpiritBeautyLounge.com. “Expect big reveals next year.”

Can’t wait till then? We found seven that added just as much volume, length, and drama as their chemical counterparts. (There’s still no waterproof natural.)

Here are seven great natural mascaras we wouldn’t bat an eye at.

Keep reading to see Well+Goods picks here.

Not so natural lashes via

Welcome to a new occasional series where we’ll share with you what products real people are using in their real  lives at a given moment in time. (Routines are subject to change without notice! Heh.)

I’m going to go first ’cause I’m a trooper, but there will be more! And bear in mind, I think of cosmetics sort of like an outfit: I wear underwear (almost) every day, but on top on that, sometimes I feel like wearing a sundress, and other days I feel like wearing jeans and a T. I treat skincare the same way. There are a few everyday items, and then there are some I swap in and out depending on my mood or the mood of my skin.

Now, without further ado… Here’s my morning skin and haircare routine.

Name: Siobhan
Age: How dare you! (32)
Current weather: Really hot, muggy, humid, northeast, generally gross
Hair: Mostly not dyed anymore, thick, wavy, long, occasionally frizzy
Skin: Pale, sensitive, Irish, burns easily, irritated easily

In the shower…

I don’t wash my face in the morning. I figure it can’t get that dirty between washing it right before bed and waking, and my skin seems to best tolerate a light hand, so I keep it simple. Instead of wash, I use a muslin cloth I got from Pai to wipe down my face. It’s gentle but still slightly scrubby, which feels great. In the tub, I use bar soap from Leap Organics, C Tonics Tantra shampoo, and C Tonics Milk conditioner. The soap is simple, and it’s from a brand I really love to support, but the hair stuff needs some ’splaining: This shampoo smells super intense, which Spirit Demerson warned me about, but it’s a treatment for “stressed scalps,” which mine certainly is right now, mainly because I got a trim the other week and with it, a really sweet rash. The rash comes and goes with stress, but there is no more extravagant a trigger than SLS/SLES-based shampoo. The conditioner, meanwhile, is the best-smelling conditioner I’ve tried in eons. It smells amazing! And it leaves my hair soft and shiny and not frizzy, even in August in New York.

Outside the shower…

I am using and loving Soapwalla’s body oil some days of the week (too lazy to moisturize daily) and depending on how many bruises I have, I also use Chocolate Sun self-tanner in light on my legs, and maybe my arms. I apply the fake-sunner before the oil, obviously. Then I apply Soapwalla deodorant.

For face, I spray Kahina Giving Beauty Toning Mist all over, then on the lower part of my face only—which is where I’m prone to spots—I use Organic Apoteke Active Face Gel, which I live and die by. [Now here's a problem: My bottle is half-empty and the line seems to be on hiatus or out of business. HELP!!!! I am freaking out on the inside about this. I have used this for three years, and I'm terrified about what is going to happen when I run out, so suggestions welcome.]

On the rest of my face, I use Tammy Fender Intensive Repair Balm. I’m not really repairing anything, but I freaking love this cream. A tiny amount goes such a long way, and it gives my skin a nice glow. If my skin feels really hydrated already, I use the much lighter Pai Chamomile and Rosehip Lotion. Then I roll on a Bella Figura eye treatment, which I am still experimenting with but will review soon, and finally, my 100% Pure Argan Oil Sunscreen follows.

I do not use leave-ins on my hair. I dry it with a sweet blowdryer if I have time, or let it go naturally wavy.

Finishing touches…

I still love Laura Mercier’s loose minerals and use it, applied with a clean finger, on places where I need it. I managed to find a color that matches my skin perfectly, so I can use it like a spot cover for the places that are a little uneven (nostrils, sometimes my undereyes, any spots I might have). Then I curl my lashes and apply some 100% Pure mascara in navy or black, really just depending on which one is closer to the top of my makeup bag. That’s basically it. If I’m feeling fancy, I might sweep on some NVey Eco or Josie Maran eyeliner on the corner of my eyes, and sometimes some lip color, too—usually Vapour or RMS these days, in pinky colors. And finally, a spritz of Honore des Pres perfume in Vamp, which I will also review soon.

And that’s it! We’ll do night routines too, but separately, since those are usually different from mornings.

So we ask you:

What on earth should I do when Organic Apoteke runs out? And second, whose routine (other than Alexandra’s, who I will strongarm into doing this, too) do you want to know about? We can’t promise anything, but we can try! If you’re a reader and you have a routine you want to share, please let us know in the comments.

We’re getting ready to announce another challenge, but in the meantime we want to do a little crowdsourcing and I’d like to indulge in a bit of an overshare. Because thinking about makeup really got me…thinking about makeup. Specifically my relationship to it, and how that’s changed in the last, oh, four days.

So the other night I was faced with a bit of a social conundrum. I was feeling like garbage, but it was one of my dearest friends’ birthdays and he was getting people together for drinks. I obviously wanted to be there, but I felt so blah and my closet was full of stuff I all of a sudden hated. It was just one of those nights, and if I was going to get out the door, I was going to have to do some serious rallying.

I’ve always marveled at women who have a playful relationship with makeup and talk about the “transformative power” of a great bold eye or a blood-red lip (hyperbole above). But I’m more into the transformative power of a concealer that makes spots disappear, or a mascara that makes my blondish lashes show up on my pale face. My relationship to makeup has, in other words, always been rather functional. And while I do wear some makeup almost every day, and yes, I’ve had a brief romance with lipstick, there’s just no whimsy to what I do! No fun! And definitely no risks.

But that’s because I have some hangups. Like in my head, it’s okay for me to correct things I think of as flaws, but if I really go for it, I’m crossing some invisible line into abject fakery. It’s probably the same reason I’ve never worn pushup bras. It’s a not a feeling that extends to other women, mind you; I love seeing other girls in makeup and dressed to the bustiest nines. It’s a personal thing that probably has something to do with my rather late embracement of my own femininity, and I’ll stop there because I’m not paying you all by the hour to listen to me wax psychological.

But the other night, for whatever reason, I decided to totally do my face. I’m talking heavy blended liner, smoky shadows, luminizer, darkened eyebrows, matte skin and a bright red lip, courtesy of Chanel.* I slicked my hair into a high ponytail and for the first time maybe ever, I thought the person in the mirror looked alarmingly not like the me that woke up this morning. I felt…transformed!

I was surprised to find that with my fancy new face came a fancy new mood. It was a dramatic shift that I can really only attribute to, um, eye makeup. I can’t wait to do it again.

So we now have a question for you.

Why do you wear makeup? Like, do you wear it to correct things you think of as “flaws”? Do you wear it because it’s fun? Do you wear it because you feel more powerful/prettier/sexier/more feminine?

We know a lot of you don’t wear makeup, and we know a lot of you who do are more than willing to go without sometimes (yay!). But right now we want to hear from those of you who do paint your faces—even if you only use very little. So get crazy in the comments. We can’t wait to hear…. And we’ll announce the new challenge soon!

*Yes, yes I still have an old Chanel lipstick—don’t stone me! It’s probably gone off because it’s that old, and no, it’s not clean at all by our standards, but boy is it pretty…. Everything else I used was clean as a whistle, though.

Crazy Swan face via

Last weekend I got married, and for the sake of transparency here, no, it was not an all-natural affair. Siobhan and I have long conceded that industrial strength antiperspirant, waterproof mascara (we all had a good cry), and long-lasting foundation have their place at special occasions. And while the smell of the super-hold hairspray gave me pause, I was very happy not to worry about my do’ collapsing mid-evening.

The other thing I did for the event, which I have not done in nearly two years now, is polish my nails. If you read the book you know that nail polish and remover are among the worst offenders when it comes to nasty chemicals. While many brands have taken out the big three—formaldehyde, toluene and DBP—it’s pretty impossible to make functional nail polish from clean ingredients.

At a certain point during our research for the book I began to buff instead, and I’ve just never turned back. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have a weird obsession with long nails, and when I stopped polishing mine something incredible happened: They stopped breaking.

Recently though I’ve wondered if that phenomenon was a figment of my imagination. Maybe it wasn’t the nail polish, but a change in my diet that had strengthened my claws? Not so.

While I loved the ritual of having my nails done last Thursday with my mom and sister, and the manicurist used OPI (which is big-three free), almost every single nail on my hands has since chipped, peeled or broken.

So, of course, now we want to know: Do you polish your nails? Did you stop because of chemicals? Have your nails changed? Telltell.

Image via

Award season is upon us! Fig & Sage, the eco style site, has announced their latest winners in the makeup category, and we’d love to share them. We may have a different take on some of these picks, but it’s nice to see some of our favorites on their list, too. For instance….

Best Product To Get The Glow: RMS Beauty Living Luminizer

We don’t leave the house without this thing.

Best Mascara: Couleur Caramel

Our friend Jessa Blades calls this the Dior Show of naturals, and we agree.

Best Cream Blush: RMS Beauty Lip2Cheek ‘Promise’ and Revolution Organics Beauty Balm ‘Blushed’ and Vapour Organic Beauty Aura Multi-Use Blush ‘Torch 203′

We love Torch! But we smear it on our lips. Is that weird? And you can’t really beat Lip2Cheek. Revolution Organics is a line neither of us has ever tried.

Anyway, the rest of the list is here. Let us know your favorites in the comments!

Ladies, thank you for all the great shopping tips—keep them coming! Today Emma Pezzack from the awesome Future Natural store (another good one to check out, by the way) has us thinking about mascara.

She’s posted about her favorite clean mascaras, and it’s a great selection. But here’s our question for the natural makeup gods (or Emma, or anyone else who knows): Is it, could it ever be, can I dream of the possibility of a natural waterproof mascara? I love mascara, and frankly I’m not that subtle with it: I love glooping it on heavy—even on my lower lashes as I try in vain to imitate the Twiggy look above. But, unless you want to be a racoon, that requires waterproof!

A quick visit to SKIN DEEP reveals that the first ingredient in most conventional waterproof mascaras is isododecane, which gets a zero on their rating. That may just be on account of lacking data though. It sounds like this stuff is a solvent, that in some forms also works as a plasticizer. At any rate, I’d like to understand whether it’s the key to waterproof mascara—and hey, if it’s not so bad, maybe someone could make a semi-natch version with it.

I could live with that, how about you? Also, share! What’s your favorite natural mascara? Found any that don’t run?

Image via

That’s right, this week over at GOOD we’re talking about your face—and what you don’t want near it. For those of you who have read the book, this top-10 list of bad chemicals will likely be familiar. Hey, nothing wrong with a little refresher, right? Here’s the repost:

A quick skim of this list reads like a prescription from Dr. Obvious. Clearly nobody wants lead or petroleum on their faces, right? But if you’ve been reading this series, our blog, or our book, you know that the cosmetics industry uses all kinds of ingredients in its products—some dangerous, some just plain confusing. What many of them have in common is that that don’t belong anywhere near our largest organ.

Here’s why: Many of them have pretty damning scientific data on record. They’re also not doing anything for your appearance—and in some cases they may be making matters worse. And thus, here is our mantra: If you can’t be sure a product is safe, and it isn’t doing your looks any favors, why bother using it? With that in mind, here’s a top-10 list of common ingredients, contaminants, and byproducts that are bad for your health and duds for your face.

	1. Petroleum and related petrochemicals The danger risk for this group of ingredients ranges from a mellow yellow to code red. Petroleum distillates are toxic solvents used in mascara, hairspray, and callus treatments. But your run-of-the-mill moisturizer probably contains something like mineral oil or paraffin in it, which are not considered dangerous per se, they’re just really, really bad for the environment and they suffocate the skin and may interfere with perspiration.
	2. Lead-tainted lipstick In 2009 the FDA discovered that of 20 lipsticks it tested, 20 were contaminated with lead. In many cases, the lead levels exceeded those set by that same FDA for candy—and since they don’t set restrictions for cosmetics, this feels like a fair model of comparison, right? Not so according to the FDA, which claims that we don’t eat our lipstick. Lead is a neurotoxin and lipstick goes on our mouths, which combine to make this debate officially ridiculous. Go for organic small-batch lipstick lines, or kiss a beet instead.
	3. Formaldehyde-leaching preservatives Our crusade for clean cosmetics started after the discovery of formaldehyde in a hair treatment (and later in our nail polish), but this known carcinogen is also “donated,” as the pros like to say, by preservatives such as quaternium-15, DMDM-hydantoin, imidazolidinyl urea, and diazolidinyl urea. That means it’s both pervasive and often unlisted, not appearing as an ingredient on labels. It’s considered a human carcinogen by many health agencies worldwide, and when it’s not giving rats nose cancer, it might still be giving you a rash.
	4. Fragrance It’s broken-record time, but here goes: Fragrance is in everything from your fancy perfume to your face wash. It represents a concoction of mystery ingredients, whose secrecy is protected by industry-ass-kissing trade laws. Lab studies by the EWG have shown them to contain a whole cocktail of hormone disruptors(among other things). Which is nice, since our hormones regulate, oh, everything: genital size, fertility, weight, acne, and beyond.
See the next five Images by Brianna Harden	5. Parabens This popular preservative group used in more than 10,000 products became very controversial when their presence was discovered in the tissue of breast tumors. What that data actually means is hotly debated but studies have shown that certain parabens mimic estrogen, the female sex hormone. This could be bad news for both men and women. Look for ingredients on the label with “paraben” as a suffix to avoid these bad boys.

We’re the first to admit that it’s hard to bid farewell to some products. That’s not to say we don’t stand by our promise: Truly clean cosmetics offer better results than the chemical crap. Hands down. But there are certain items you’re just not going to find in the naturals category…

Like the waterproof mascara that leaves nary a smudge after a night on the town. Or the antiperspirant that actually stops you from sweating—which is generally a terrible idea, but incredibly appealing on a hot summer’s day or, you know, a date. Natural hair dye? It works for some women, but we can’t recommend it in good conscience—just read in the book about Siobhan’s unfortunate turn with natural highlights. How about  a bewitching scent that lasts all day? Not likely, since you can thank hormone disrupting phthalates for that lasting power, and those are verboten in a real clean product. Nail polish does offer some better options, but nothing we’d put on our kids (if we had any).

So what’s a girl to do? Well, we subscribe to the 80-20 rule. That means some nights we whip out the waterproof mascara, or that old Degree stick we never brought ourselves to throw out. Not every day, or even every week, but certainly when the occasion calls for it.

Now you: What decidedly unnatural product or treatment could you never let go of? (And get ready, because next week’s challenge may involve one…)

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In this recent article from ReadyMade magazine we shared some of our favorite DIY makeup tricks.

The assignment? To make your entire face from scratch.

Here are our best simple recipes for:

Lips and Cheeks

Eye Liner

Eye Shadow

Mascara

Image via