Less Toxic Lip Color Swap

The point of this post is two-fold. First, I want to briefly share what I am doing to streamline my beauty routine. Second, I'd like to share some less toxic/cleaner/safer alternatives I've found to replace some popular lip products from my old beauty routine. Ready? OK!

In my continued effort to leave the house looking somewhat put-together (I wrote here about not wearing flip flips anymore, except for at the beach), I've decided to streamline my beauty routine. I moisturize with coconut oil. Then I apply mineral makeup foundation and blush, dark brown eye shadow to fill in my brows, black eyeliner and mascara, and occasionally some eye shadow. As for my lips, I decided I wanted to have three go-to colors that will make choosing lip color a breeze: something bold, something pink, and something berry-red. 

If I really want to limit my beauty routine to completely non-toxic and 100% natural products, just about the only product I could use is coconut oil, but this girl likes to add a little color to her life, so that just won't do. My compromise is to search high and low for products containing ingredients that rate low (like 0-2) on the EWG's Skin Deep Database. I'm trying out makeup by Rejuva Minerals (foundation, blush, finishing powder, and eyeliner) and so far so good. I haven't swapped out all my eye shadows, though, because I use them so rarely. Lip color, though, is important for me to be less toxic because, you know, I eat and drink with my mouth, so some product will get ingested. I know it's such a small amount, but still, I feel better using products that don't have big no-nos like parabens, parfums, and pthalates. (By the way, here is my post on safe products during pregnancy, which I pretty much have continued post-pregnancy.)

So here's what I swapped out:

Comments -- Bite Beauty lipsticks ($24) are great. The formula is creamy, and the color (I got Quince) is beautiful. I have received lots of compliments while wearing it. I used to wear a bright, bold color by NARS ($26) years and years ago, but I recently looked at the ingredients list, and while I can't say if any of the ingredients are questionable (some NARS products are formulated with parabens, but this particular lipstick tube indicated no parabens), Bite Beauty lipsticks are marketed as being made with food-grade ingredients, so that's why I prefer it over something like NARS.

Comments -- When I was teaching, all I wore on my lips was Dior Lip Glow ($32). It was the perfect easy color for a busy teacher. It was moisturizing with a hint of color, and just putting on something "Dior" felt luxurious. Then, I stopped using products with the ambiguous "parfum/fragrance" ingredient (some critics/experts say that companies avoid disclosing the use of pthalates by simply listing this ingredient), so there went my Lip Glow. Enter jane iredale's Just Kissed Lip and Cheek Stain ($25). While Dior's product was more moisturizing, this lip stain gives me the perfect shade of pink. Both of these products claim to enhance your natural lip color, and for me, Just Kissed does it best. (By the way, I also tried Juice Beauty's Purely Kissable "universal" color, and it looked awful on me but great on my sister.) 

Comments -- While the other swaps I made were for comparable colors, these products actually have a similar effect rather than color. What I loved about Clinique's "Black Honey" gloss ($15) was that it was a very easy color to wear. It's actually the only lip color I had been wearing up until I got the Korres, but after a year of use, I noticed a funky smell coming from it. Plus, it contains a few questionable ingredients that I would like to avoid (like petrolatum -- trying to avoid petroleum byproducts in my beauty routine if I can). Korres Lip Butter ($12) is not as high gloss as Clinique, but it is moisturizing and the Wild Rose color does so much more to brighten up my face than Black Honey ever did.

I still don't know what to do about mascara. I have been using Maybelline Great Lash waterproof mascara since I was 16, and it's the only mascara that doesn't uncurl my lashes after using a lash curler. If anyone has this same problem and has found a cleaner, safer solution, please let me know!

All images via sephora.com, except jane iredale lip stain image via nordstrom.com.

(For more on this topic, check out this blog I just discovered and this post that popped up in my feed today -- so timely!)