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Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Vegan and Cruelty Free Gel Polish Manicures

I get asked a lot which gel polishes are vegan friendly and it's been ages since I researched it. So I decided to contact some of the well known brands see which ones were OK. don't see your favourite? Leave me a comment and I will contact them, if I have not already. NB: these are gel polishes that cure under a UV/LED light, not 'gel effect' polishes.


Firstly, feel free to bookmark this page as I will update it as and when there are changes, or I get new replies. These are my findings so far:


CRUELTY FREE (any marked vegan relates only to the gel polish unless otherwise stated):

Salon Treatments
- Bio Sculpture vegan
- The Gel Bottle** vegan - all products
- Gelish / Polygel vegan [Nail Harmony]
- Ink London vegan - all products except their Kolinsky brushes, which are natural hair
- Orly Gel Fx vegan (Orly are Logical Harmony approved, so I only contacted them to ask if Gel FX was vegan)
- The Manicure Company vegan


**my nail lady uses The Gel Bottle and it is AH-MAZING! Seriously. Nothing has ever stayed on my nails as well as this, including cheapo acrylic!


At Home Systems
- Leighton Denny vegan - all products (not technically a gel polish but they make a gel top coat that goes on top of any regular polish)
- Madam Glam vegan 
- Red Carpet Manicure vegan 
- SensatioNail vegan friendly (NOTE, the website says that the products don't contain animal ingredients but their CS told me that all shades except the following are vegan, these shades contain carmine: Original SensatioNail - Jelly Sherbet & Ravishing Raisin. SensatioNail Express - Want a Peach of Me? Made Him Blush, Merry Meringue & Lovely Lychee.)
- Bluesky - previously on the no list for not being able to confirm if they sell in china but bluesky are now Vegan Society registered! Win!

NOT CRUELTY FREE or GREY AREA BRANDS

- Shellac [CND brand]: not cruelty free - 26.02.2018 originally they were on my ok list above but they have this week been added to Logical Harmony's avoid list for testing where required by law. So clearly they are big fat liars! 
- OPI GelColor: not cruelty free
- Jessica: grey area. Replied with generic 'we are cruelty free' statement 12.10.2017 and have not responded to any further questions sent that day and chased several times since.


Brands I have contacted, but have received no or limited replies from to date; I will update as received
- Kiss Everlasting Gel Polish: I originally contacted them on 09.10.2017 and again 21.11.2017. No reply received.
- IBD Just Gel: emailed 21.11.17, no reply received to date.


Happy humpday!
Sal
xXx

Friday, 10 November 2017

Lily England Makeup Brushes

Recently I was contacted by the owner of Lily England, who make really pretty vegan makeup brushes, asking if I'd like to try some of their brushes. I of course said yes please and they sent me this absolutely beautiful package of brushes!


The sent me two sets, one that comes in a lovely faux leather bag and contains 2 face brushes and 3 eye brushes. The bag is the perfect size for my makeup brushes and I took it with me on honeymoon as it holds quite a few!

They also sent me the 8 piece eye brush set


Hopefully you already know that I wouldn't recommend something just because I got it sent to me, so when I say I love these brushes you can trust that. I went on my hen do the day after I received them and they were thoroughly put through their paces!

In fact they were used on pretty much all 8 hens at one point or another over the weekend! At least one of my bridesmaids ordered the 8 piece set before we even got home and I ordered 2 more sets as birthday gifts for some friends of ours' daughters, who are just getting into makeup.

They are super soft and really pretty, which my terrible photography doesn't do justice to. I use the eye brushes basically every day, I love them and you will be seeing them next time I do a favourites / makeup video I'm sure.

Also, since I got these brushes, I ordered the face cleansing brush, which I also really like but I have only used it a few times so I don't have a full review of that yet. I have my eye on their rose gold detangling brush too, (yes I'm a sucker for rose gold!) so no doubt I'll be ordering that soon.

Laterz
Sal xXx

Tuesday, 7 November 2017

Southampton Vegan Festival

This weekend just gone was the first Southampton vegan festival and my husband and I (yep, we got married! More on that another time though!) got in the car, drove the hour or so to get there to check it out.

It was worth the trip, we ate some really good food and always spent way to much moolah on stuff to take home. Here's what we got...

We started with some Greek food from Greek Vegan Deli Specialities; having just come back from our honeymoon in Crete, we had to! And we were not disappointed. We both got a pitta (which was amazing!) filled with tofu halloumi, falafel, salad and a bunch of dips including vegan taramasalata! avocado, some sort of sweetcorn relish and what I think was beetroot hummus.

It was so good, I mean look at it! (I love that they gave us a fork too, as it was a messy sucker!)

I also grabbed some of their baklava to take home, which Simon and I ate for lunch the next morning.

After we ate, we decided to have a leisurely wander around and this is what we bought:

We got a couple of pieces of cake from Vegan Sweet Tooth, London to share. We went for the pistachio, pomegranate and rose cake. The frosting tasted like straight up soya yogurt to me, which I wasn't a fan of at first but actually it worked well with the cake. The cake was really tasty and I liked the rose flavour.


We also bought a piece of the nutella brownie which I wasn't a huge fan of, it just tasted healthy, if you know what I mean! haha. It was good but I'd have preferred it to be sweeter.

Then we found the VeggiJelli stand which interested Simon, as he has requested a trifle for his upcoming birthday! We got 4 packs to take with us.

And some ready made to eat then and there. It was pretty good and they told us it works well for trifle as the fruit won't stop it setting. The more important question I forgot to ask was will vodka stop it setting (like the sachets of veggie jelly crystals you can buy in holland and barrett!!)?? I'll let you know!


Then we went to the Eden stand so I could get a new bottle of their J'adore copy! I ended up buying that and their copy of Flower Bomb. Plus two for Simon! I've been trying to find a copy of his Mont Blanc aftershave for ages and after a chat with the lovely owner, he advised me that one of their Abercrombie copies is actually exactly the same. And it is pretty spot on!! So yay. We also picked up their copy of Jean-Paul Gaultier's classic for men.


I spotted a stand called LoveSeitan and as I do, I had to give it a go! I bought a half loaf of the original seitan, but they had a curry version, a smokey and a couple of others.

Then one of my favourite things, was some fudge from Slab! I got two bars of the Tiger Butter (chocolate and peanut butter), a cookies and cream and a salted caramel. Honestly I thought the tiger butter would be my favourite and it is really really really good, but the salted caramel was my favourite! SO good, I will definitely be ordering some more of their vegan bars from their website.

We also of course had to pay a visit to Hannah Banana's stand, as she made our amazing wedding cakes last month and we are big fans! We grabbed a couple of cupcakes, not picture, for a friend of ours working on the Sea Shepherd stand, as she missed out on our wedding cake and we also grabbed a slice of the Speculoos cake and some jaffa cakes. We did have a jaffa cake cake at our wedding, but all the jaffa cakes were eaten before I got a chance to have one, so I was really pleased that Simon spotted these - and they were yummy!!




Lastly, we managed to snag the last Drunken Mushroom Pie from the Mr Nice Pie stand; Simon and I ate this last night and it was really good!

Then before we snuck off, we grabbed a burger to share from Got No Beef (which also had a FroYo section too, but I forgot to get some). Lighting was crap so my pics are not so great, but hopefully you get the idea. This was a tasty burger! We got cheeseburgers, with the mild cheese and all the toppings :)


The lighting really was shite!


So all in all it was really good and worth the trip!

I believe the venue will be different next year, which is probably a good thing. There were definitely a few issues, it was in a nightclub so lighting was low, hence my even shitter photos than ususal and although apparently the venue said the parking was free beforehand, they changed their minds on the day - not the fault of the organisers though and I don't remember it being particularly expensive to park!

Did anyone go? What did you think?

Laters
Sal xXx