ORIGINS COSMETIC LINE

 

Origins is a cosmetic brand whose philosophy is driven by the goal to use non-animal ingredients. Most of their products are even suited for vegans; however, some of their formulations do contain beeswax and honey.

For a Muslim, and vegetarian consumers Origins would be the perfect option. You can pick out any product from their cosmetic and skincare line without hesitation.

Now one of the drawbacks of most plant-based companies is that they tend to be pricey and people would like to know if they’re getting their money’s worth.

Although I can only review and rate their Stay Tuned Foundation for you, I cannot rate this company as a whole because I haven’t tried many of their other products.

Nonetheless, the company states that if you’re not completely satisfied with your purchase then they’ll happily exchange or refund your purchase.

What I can tell you is the Stay Tuned Foundation I’ve used by this company is amazing; this definitely encourages me to try out more of their products.

Unfortunately, the one drawback for this company is that is not widely accessible in person. The only store I personally know that carries Origin products is Sephora; however, they only carry Origins skincare products and don’t have any of their makeup products. Although Origins does have a website, the shipping is only accessible to individuals living in the States and Canada.

Nonetheless, there is still a method of receiving Origin products even if you don’t live in Canada and the United States, I'll talk about this subject in my next post!

SUMMARY: HALAL SKINCARE, COSMETICS AND BATH/BODY PRODUCTS

Smokey Eye

So last week I had a "skincare class". It's basically a class you do with a number of women (usually three or more), where you give them all facials and introduce them to Mary Kay products.

After the facials were done and the girls got to relax upstairs, my sister's friend Fatima asked me to do a look on her for fun. I wanted something a little dramatic so I opted for a smokey eye.

Enjoy!

And big thanks to beautiful Fatima for giving me her beautiful eyes to play with!

AVON

I remember as a little girl my mom bringing home a package every once in a while. This little package had lots of makeup goodies. Generally there would be a nail polish or two, a lipstick, an eye pencil, some talc powder, and my moms favorite perfum Haiku.

Avon was a great conveinence for my mother who had four kids basically back-to-back. It was a way for her to do her shopping without heading out with the four of us driving her insane. Now at 21, Avon is such a familiar brand to me. It’s a brand that I never once thought of questioning until recently: when I became employeed with Avon as a representative.

I qucikly went online and began reading the ingredients for all the cosmetic products: glycerin, lecithin, urea, zinc stearate, stearic acid and the list went on....

I thought, well there definitely is a plant/synthetic alternative for all of these ingredients, let me give them an email. And to my dissmay Avon generally uses animal derived ingredients because they are the most abundantly found. Moreover, Avon was the first lipstick I encountered that had the ingredient UREA! ARGH! I don’t want an animals pee near my lips!

But here I was, only a day into my new job, already regretting that I signed up for this thing. All my friends and family members were Muslim, so I had to let them know what products were permissible to use. There are a few products that were acceptable to use, but most of them were haram. I told each of my customers which ingredients were haram, and which were halal, and if they accidently chose a haram product I would notify them and remove it from their order. But I think most people became turned off by Avon.

I’m still employeed with Avon for my own personal discounts, but I would advise Muslim Consumers to absolutley avoid all the foundations, lip products, and mascaras. The rest of the makeup you can  either contact the company via phone/email, or look at their online shopping website for thier ingredient list.

Keep in mind that even if a product does not contain any haram ingredients, it is still processed in a factory that uses animal ingredients so cross-contamination can occur. If cross-contamination makes you an easy, it’s better you opt for a vegetable-based brand. 

Purple and Cream

  This is a really pretty purple and cream colored look. It's something for the girls out there that would like something a little more dramatic then a neutral look, but more subdued than a smokey eye. The best picture that describes the look is the one on the top. The rest of the photos came out too dark but I decided to include them anyways cause they showed the eye-look in different angles.

EYES

1. Place Mary Kay color crystalline on the whole lid.
2. Take a card, or a piece of tape and angle it on the side of your eyes, moving out. 
3. Place Mac Shock-a-holic on the outer V and spread it up towards the outer lid and outer crease. Blend it into the Mary Kay eyeshadow.
4. Take the color Sumptuous Olive by Mac and place it where the cream and purple eyeshadow meet. Use this color to further blend the purple and cream together. 
5. Line with Mac Blacktrack Fluidline 
6. Curl Lashes and put on some Mascara. I'm using Revlon Grow Luscious Mascara. 

FACE

1.  Hard Candy face primer
2.  Revlon Photo-Ready Foundation in Medium
3.  Nars Concealer in Ginger 
4.  Revlon Golden Affair, Berry Daring Blush

LIPS

1. GOSH Velvet Touch Lip Pencil in Wild Cherry
2. L.A colors lipstick in Romance

MAC COSMETICS

Mac Cosmetics, whether you're a makeup artist, a makeup enthusiast, or someone who wears makeup occasionally, you've definitely heard of Mac Cosmetics.

But, to buy or not to buy? Does it contain a nice little piglet or two? Maybe piglet's friend cow is in with him?

Well if you're a Mac lover you can heave a great sigh of relief because Mac ensures its customers that most of their products are plant based. The only ingredients that are animal based in their products are Beeswax, Lanolin, and Carmine.

Beeswax and Lanolin are both permissible for Muslim consumers, but Vegans may want to avoid these ingredients for personal reasons.

Carmine on the other hand is a debatable ingredient. In lip products this ingredient is definitely Haram due to the fact that you will end up consuming the product. On other areas of the face this product is debatable and up to your own discretion.

Unfortunately in every shade of lipstick, the ingredient list only states carmine as being a "May Contain" ingredient (depending on the shade of lipstick). Fortunately, the company will kindly tell you which lipsticks have and do not have carmine in them. I have emailed a number of companies, and I will tell you that Mac is one of the few companies that will tell you if a particular shade of lipstick has carmine. This makes Mac a great company for Muslim consumers. The only downside is that you have to wait for Mac to respond to your inquiry before you can go out and purchase your lipstick, and if you're impatient like me, you're really going to hate having to wait before you buy your desired product.

Just to help some of you sisters out, I have compiled a list of some of the Mac lipsticks/lip liners that DO NOT have carmine. Keep in mind that Mac has a huge assortment of lipstick shades, so if your lip product isn't on the list, make sure to give them a call:

LIPSTICK	Pro Longwear Lipcreme	Lip Pencils	Lip Glass
Brave	Till Tomorrow	Spice	2N
Ruby Woo	Sweet Ever After	Whirl	Lust
Snob	Unlimited	Stone (discontinued)	Just Superb
Girl About Town		Oak	Deelight
Cherish		What Comes Naturally	Loud and Lovely
Kinda Sexy		Entertain Me	Fashion Scoop
Twig		Night Moth	Double Dare
Myth			Boy Bait
Profusion (discontinued)			Floral Abundance
Kraft (discontinued)
Angel
Please Me
Mac Red
Russian Red
Taupe
Honeylove
Velvet Teddy
Morange
Spice is Nice
Verve
Mocha
Retro
Amorous
Del Rio
Rebel
Captive

Priyanka Chopra Makeup Look

I think Priyanka Chopra is exceptionally beautiful. Most of her makeup looks are rather neutral with a very earth-tone lip colors. Her eye makeup is usually just down to a dark liner and some shadow to smudge it out. 

This is one look from the cover of Vogue (India) that really stood out to me.  It’s absolutely beautiful. It has the general simplicity of her daily makeup routine, but incorporates more pink hues, instead of her usual brown. Plus, you can’t leave out that smoked out brown shadow that she sports really well

I tried to recreate this look to the best of my ability as it was hard to distinguish the texture of the lipstick and if the blush was matte or shimmery.

Here’s the look:

** The rest of my face is described below.**

EYES:

1.Take shade number 2 and pack on outter lid.

2. Take shade number 3 and pack on inner lid and blend towards outer lid

3. Use color number 4 to bridge color 2 and 3 together by blending the colors together

4. Pack color number 1, and pack on outer V and inner lid.

5. Lightly blend eye shadows up towards your outer crease using a shade number 4

6. Take shade number 5 and use as highlight underneath your brow. Take some more and lightly blend down into the outer crease.

7. Take black eye pencil, I used Milani eye pencil, and line the lash line

8. Take Shadow number 1 again, and use it to smudge out your liner

9. Curl lashes, I used a Revlon curler

10. Apply generous amount of black mascara to lashes

**Tip: Although you may love your makeup in person, take a test photo to see how it looks on camera. A lot of times “perfect” makeup in person, becomes very washed out on camera.

LIPS:

1.fill lips with L.A girl auto lip pencil in mauve

2. layer Mac lipstick  Honeylove over lips

3. layer Mac lipstick Kindasexy over lips

**L.A girl lip pencils do not contain any carmine in ANY of their lip pencils/lipsticks.

**Mac shades Honeylove and Kindasexy do not contain carmine.

FACE:

1.Foundation: Revlon Photo-Ready

2.Mac studio fix powder in C4

3. Use NYX Expresso blush to contour cheeks, then blend blush up to the apples of the cheek and out to the temples.

4. Use NARS Albatross as a highlight on the cheeks.

Voila! Hope you enjoyed the look!

Toodles!

-Maria