Pickle’s Potions and Lotions : Vegan Lash + Brow Serum

The team at The Amazing Blog knows how difficult it is to find an affordable, vegan lash and brow serum, especially one that is handmade, woman-owned, organic, natural and cruelty-free. Pickle’s Potions and Lotions’ Vegan Lash and Brow Serum ticks all these boxes. This best-seller is an award-winning product, having won the Editor’s Choice in the Beauty Shortlist 2021 Awards and the Bronze Award in the Best Natural Product at UK Global Makeup Awards 2021.

A skincare junkie from a young age, founder Kristin Mutchler’s cabinets were always filled to the brim with perfumes and products, but it wasn’t until she became pregnant with her first child that Pickle’s Potions’ journey began. “As first-time mums are prone to do, I started researching everything and discovered that my skincare products were full of highly suspect ingredients, from hormone disruptors to toxic fragrances,” Kristin went on to say, “I began to make my own products and dove into the science of skincare, researching different ingredients and the chemical composition of plants and oils and how they work in synergy.” She was even more determined to create an all-natural skincare brand that is safe and effective for everyone after discovering her baby was prone to eczema. Kristin’s background in science, having taken several college-level science courses, and her passion for learning about skincare motivated her to take classes in product formulation, aromatherapy and skin care science, which marked the first steps of her brand’s creation. Combine this with her knack for gardening in her rural Maine garden, foraging local surrounding fields and woods for other ingredients too. Pickle’s Potions’ biggest wish is to create products with the best possible ingredients for our precious skin, free from synthetic chemicals, parabens, artificial fragrances and petroleum byproducts. Instead, each non-toxic batch is family-safe, handcrafted and carefully formulated using freshly handpicked botanical ingredients and precious oils in Wayne, Maine. On top of this, each bottle and tube is PETA-certified and has never been tested on animals. With this in mind, their distinctive potions are handcrafted with only 100% pure therapeutic grade essential oils, as well as cold-pressed vegetable oils, butters and botanical extracts. You won’t find any pre-made bases with synthetic colours, fragrances or preservatives. In contrast, everything is handmade in tiny batches to ensure the utmost freshness and potency. As Kristin promises, “I handcraft each batch with compassion and dedication and have poured my heart and soul into this small business.”

Their much-loved Vegan Lash and Brow Serum is a luscious blend of various natural, nutritious oils that have been used for centuries to encourage and stimulate hair growth and health. This product is designed to naturally boost hair growth using the key ingredients of burdock, horsetail, liquorice root, nettle, and meadowsweet-infused camellia seed oil.

Burdock is a plant native to Japan that promotes healthy hair and reverses thinning through an ingredient called arctiin. Meanwhile, horsetail, a non-flowering weed, encourages proper hair growth through its high silica and selenium content. Additionally, liquorice root’s richness in L-carnitine, creatine and glycyrrhiza inflata stimulates hair roots, promoting growth and reducing thinning. Nettle combats hair loss and aids hair growth through its abundance of silica and sulphur as hair follicles are regenerated, and hair breakage is minimised. Lastly, camellia seed oil’s blend of proteins, glycerides and vitamin E conditions and fortifies hair; and when infused with meadowsweet, it can boost scalp and hair health as a natural astringent.

More ingredients in the mix comprise hexane-free castor oil, which lubricates the hair shaft and strengthens hair, unrefined rosehip seed oil, which nourishes hair through its high fatty acid and vitamin content, and sea buckthorn oil replenishes hair through its abundance in fatty acids. Besides the above, you can find vitamin E, vegetable glycerin, candelilla wax, therapeutic grade organic Bulgarian lavender, frankincense carterii and organic rosemary essential oils. Nearly all these ingredients are organic, from burdock to rosehip seed oil. As you can see, an array of nutrients are packed in this little tube – ready to condition lashes and brows, helping them to strengthen and grow. BTW the difference between their regular Lash + Brow Serum and this vegan version is the beeswax used.

What attracted us to this formula was the natural and organic ingredients. If you have permanent make-up brows and eyeliner like us, then there are certain ingredients always to avoid such as retinol, ascorbic and salicylic acid - which fade the pigment. This is why we want to try the natural Vegan Lash + Brows Serum. It’s recommended to apply the serum nightly for both growth and restoration on the lashes and brows. Rest assured, the serum’s thicker consistency won’t drip or run, meaning it won’t irritate the eyes. Despite being thick, we found the serum is highly spreadable, allowing easy application. It can also be used as a clear gel for taming unruly brows. It has a mild and natural castor oil scent and is smooth in texture so that it doesn’t lashes weigh down. We’ve used it regularly for a couple of weeks, taking a break from wearing our Lashify lashes. It’s perfect for reconditioning and hydrating the hair follicles. And in that time, it made our lashes slightly thick and more nourished. However, it probably needs at least 6-9 weeks of regular use to see noticeable results in any sparse areas. It’s a natural brow and lash serum and conditions like no other we’ve tried. It’s another of our #amazingfinds and a product we’d highly recommend adding to your nighttime routine. To purchase a 10ml tube of Pickle’s Potions and Lotions Vegan Lash and Brow Serum at £16.96, see here.

Floragy : No 1 Strengthening Hair Oil

More so than any other time of year, the balmy British summer days bring humidity, giving our hair the dreaded frizz… Every summer at The Amazing Blog, it becomes a bit of a mission to find a nourishing and hydrating haircare to tame our flyaway locks, which is why we want to talk about Floragy's No 1 Strengthening Hair Oil, which Edwina judged at the 2022 Beauty Shortlist Awards, where it was awarded an Editor's Choice.

Floragy is a natural skincare brand, founded in 2019 by Louisa Tidy, She started the company after stepping down from her fast-paced city world and moving to the countryside to embrace a slower pace of life. "I was exhausted after a full-on career travelling and working too many hours and wanted to take some time to rebalance my life. I’d always suffered from dry skin but as I’ve got older, I’ve found I need extra protection during the colder months. After some extensive research and experimenting, I created a few recipes for skincare products which my skin reacted well to, and I preferred over my usual products.” Louisa also became involved with various holistic practices such as acupuncture, homoeopathy and mediation, together with natural ingredients and studying how they could improve one's wellbeing. After a few years of testing and developing formulas, she launched Floragy with the ethos that ‘less is more’ keeping their ingredients to a minimum and using only key botanicals. In an interview with Faversham Life, Louisa revealed how they came up with the brand name, "We dreamt up the name Floragy by combining 'flora' and 'foraging." Floragy, as the name suggests, is made up of only natural botanicals; it’s clean and transparent with easy-to-understand labelling and focuses on using the healing powers of plant-based ingredients. Since its inception, Floragy’s focus is on its eco credentials and sustainability. Ingredients are sourced from local farmers and ethical producers, and the packaging is recyclable and has glass bottles and jars with aluminium lids. They also offer a refill option for the haircare range, so there’s less waste is generated from the pipette applicators. It’s a vegan and 100% cruelty-free brand and lists all the product ingredients and their benefits on its website here.. Floragy gives back by planting a minimum of 10 trees a month through One Tree Planted, they donaten10% of all sales of their Restore Body Oil to the Ocean Generation, and has pledged to be net zero carbon by 2040 as part of the SME Climate Hub.

The No 1 Strengthening Hair Oil is one of Floragy's most popular and well-loved products and with good reason. This product is designed to soften and strengthen dry hair as well as soothing and moisturising the scalp. When used for styling, it offers more defined curls and worked brilliantly on our unruly hair.

There are only five ingredients, coconut oil which hydrates and enhances the hair's lubrication, making it easier to style and manage. It also increases shine and helps prevent frizz. Argan oil is probably the key ingredient with its many benefits. It’s rich in fatty acids and vitamin E, and helps improve dryness, smooths and detangles the hair, and protects it from damage. Olive squalane is an excellent conditioner and helps restore hydration to the hair and scalp. It also softens the hair texture and adds shine without adding any greasiness. The two essential oils are sweet orange and bergamot; apart from their zesty fragrance they also provide other hair and scalp benefits. The sweet orange is full of vitamin C to purify the scalp and aid healthy hair growth; bergamot is full of antioxidants which shield the hair and scalp against the damaging effects of oxidative stress, and antimicrobials which stop bacteria.

Hair oils can be applied in many ways, post-wash, added to shampoo as a boost, or even as an overnight hair and scalp treatment. We do post-wash for condition and styling, and use oils overnight as a treatment. But adding to shampoo as a boost? Well, that was a first for us. When we tried combining it with shampoo, it stopped any stripping or straw-like effects, that we sometimes get from testing out various haircare. We highly recommend trying this method if you have any of these issues. We’d also like to add that this No 1 Strengthening Hair Oil was particularly suitable for our dry ends and for smoothing long, fine and textured hair. Hair oils are an essential part of our haircare, mainly used as a detangler and to help deter further split ends. Floragy offers three different hair oils, all of which have specific benefits. The No 2 Conditioning Hair Oil is lighter and probably best for bleached or damaged chemically treated hair, it helps to bring back condition and shine. And the No 3 Smoothing Hair Oil is another award-winning hair oil, that’s excellent for sealing in moisture and adding extra shine.

Apart from leaving hair smelling deliciously fresh and citrusy, this No 1 Strengthening Hair Oil made it shiner, softer and curls more defined. This is why Floragy is another of our #amazingfinds and a go-to for its simple, natural and effective haircare ingredients. To purchase the 15ml No 1 Strengthening Hair Oil at £14 see here, or £25 for 30ml, both have refill options.

Friday Favourites – Healing Face Mists

Don’t you love it when you wake up, spray your face with a natural, delicate and fresh face mist, both invigorating and uplifting, all to start your day off right. At The Amazing Blog, we’ve always been keen on facial mists, but in our recent search we’ve found that too many high street facial mists are ineffective, watery or filled with chemicals. Today we’re happy to say that we’ve discovered some new and natural healing mist solutions to share with you.  We hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

The first #Amazingfind healing mist we have is from Max and Me, a company dedicated to making you look better but also feeling better.

The brand was founded by Max and Tanja Gruber, who set out to create skincare that they quote that it “Goes beyond mere product performance. Skincare that suffuses you with a most beautiful, vibrant flow of energy.” Max is the entrepreneurial spirit of the pair, and designed the company’s structure so it is as fully ethical as possible particularly regarding ingredient sourcing and sustainability. His partner, Tanja trained in Energetic Healing, Kinesiology, and Aromatherapy for three years at the Austrian Academy of Kinesiology. The couple’s respective backgrounds fused into a line of unique skin care products with an energy-healing basis.

The Intuitive is a botanical facial mist that has a blend of ingredients to ‘elevate skin, soul, and spirit’. One of the main ingredients, palo santo, is an Ecuadorian-sourced plant that heals and increases positive energy around you, which uplifts your mood. On top of this, wild agonis essential oil regulates your circadian rhythm for better sleeping at night, and blue tansy relaxes and calms your mind. These natural ingredients work to balance the flow of energy around you and reduce any negative ions while smelling like the woods after it rains. They are also gentle yet effective for inflamed, dry, or acne-prone skin.

Besides providing much-needed relief to our dry summer skin, what drew us to this product was its healing effects. When we sprayed it, we instantly felt tranquil - and it’s something that we’ve carried with us throughout the day even as we walked through the busy London streets. You can use this facial mist for many purposes, such as a room and pillow spray or mixed with a balm for a face mask, but we preferred using it on freshly cleansed skin to let our moisturiser soak in better. The spray has very fine particles, which evenly distribute the mist onto your face, and is hand-blended into a sturdy glass bottle. You can purchase The Intuitive (100ml) here for 70 €.

The next product we have for you is made specifically for skin hydration by Alexandra Soveral. As regular readers will know, we recently featured her Sweet Orange & Rosemary Shampoo. Soveral founded the brand with her business partner Jori Aleem to form natural products developed using cutting edge science. Before starting her beauty and perfume line, Soveral spent time understanding skin as an aromatherapist and facialist. She also learned how to curate products organically as a cosmetic designer. The company is also dedicated to sustainability and given the Positive Luxury Butterfly Mark, which ‘identifies the luxury brands that meet the highest standards of verified innovation, social, and environmental performance’. It uses pure and natural ingredients found in its Floral Rain Hydrating Face Mist.

This face mist combines vitamins and antioxidants with essential oils that hydrate and even your skin, making it optimal to use as a toner to prep your face for oils, serums, or moisturiser. Aloe vera nourishes your skin but doesn’t make the product watery so that you can use it over make up for a midday skin pick-me-up. The orange blossom and rose scent is also refreshing to use on your neck and décolletage. We found that it smells good when sprayed around your surroundings as with just a single spritz of the mist, the fragrance holds its aroma. It is hand-blended in London and packaged in a recyclable plastic bottle. You can buy the Hydrating Face Mist (250ml) here for £45.

Finally, to complete this week’s Friday Favourite’s trio of healing mists, we have the Universal Soul Company’s, 3-in-1 Soul Mist in their signature fragrance STILL. The luxury lifestyle brand was founded by well-known British actress Sara Griffiths to value all five of your senses amid all the media and technology that surrounds us and empower others through positive well-being. The company focuses on the idea of ‘profit for purpose’ and donates a portion of its revenue to different causes as another way to enable others. The Universal Soul Company also has the Positive Luxury Butterfly Mark of approval for sustainability.

The name of the Soul Mist comes from its three intended uses: room spray, meditation, and pillow mist. Instead of needing three separate products, only this mist is necessary throughout your day from morning until night. Patchouli and vetiver base notes combine to create a strong musky scent while lavender oil and may chang layered on top of it create a sweet floral fragrance that appears a few moments after spraying the mist. May chang has been proven to relieve fatigue and lethargy, leaving you in a better mood and lavender helps you sleep and relieves body aches. The mist is made with 100 per cent natural essential oils and mineral waters, which break up air molecules and generate negative ions of well-being like being near a waterfall or the ocean. It is alcohol-free, vegan, cruelty-free, and has no artificial fragrances, so it is safe for use on your face and around children, animals, and furniture.

The 3-in-1 Soul Mist is Universal’s first brand product, and it does not disappoint. The smell made us feel instantly relaxed and lasted. We found it was particularly helpful in making us feel less stressed when waking up and getting going in the morning. You can purchase the hand-blended product (100ml) here for £37.

These three healing mists prove that creating a relaxed state of mind is not just reserved for a retreat or an exclusive yoga studio. In fact, they teach you how you can build a tranquil zone of your own with just one spray. Using each of these healing mists helped us to feel like we could conquer the day with both an uplifted mood and more radiant looking skin!

Virginia Stone – ‘Eyes’ for Kavesi

When you’re searching out skincare items, often the three categories you’ll see are ‘dry’, ‘normal’, and ‘oily’. They’re appear all encapsulating, or so it seems. Some of us with ‘combination’ skin at The Amazing Blog and frequently struggle to find the right cleanser or moisturiser that won’t make our skin greasy or dry. The latest product we tried is from Virginia Stone it brings about the idea that finding the right products for your skin may be based on your skin tone rather than these three general categories.

Virginia Stone built her brand on the foundation of ‘passion, purpose, and an unyielding desire to innovate and inspire’. She set out to revolutionise the skincare industry by creating a sustainable luxury brand and adhering to three core values of people, planet, and passion. Virginia Stone, as a company, dedicates itself to global social and environmental sustainability and all of its products are fair-trade, eco-friendly, and vegan. What drew us to this brand was its ethos. It felt simple categories like ‘dry’, ‘normal’, and ‘oily’ do not account for certain skin-tone-specific characteristics such as skin density and sensitivity, SPF requirements, and potency tolerance levels. So, Virginia Stone created three collections: Kavesi for fair skin tones, Jasari for medium skin tones, and Odaja for dark skin tones. We felt these groupings were less arbitrary and more encapsulating, especially if you have ‘normal’ or ‘combination’ skin. 

We tried their ‘Eyes’ for Kavesi in Sand , a 3-in-1 superfood cream with five layers (Butter, Nectar, Tea Syrup, Corrective Complex, Elixir) of antioxidants, vitamins, and nutrients. The formula is also pH balanced and oxygenated to protect your skin from UV rays and pollution, improving your skin’s elasticity and lightening dark shadows. It is designed to stimulate cell renewal, increase blood flow, and improve circulation specifically for fair skin, which is highly sensitive and allergy prone. When we used it, we saw diminished fine lines as well as less puffy and brighter skin like we had used a jade roller. But what stood out to us was the cream’s texture. It’s solid, and you can’t dip your finger into it, but the warmth of your finger picks up the right amount of the product that feels smoother than butter and leaves your skin feeling the same way. The cream is oilier than typical moisturisers, yet it doesn’t feel sticky and spreads well. It leaves your skin feeling smooth and matte, which makes the cream perfect to use as a primer during the day, and nourishes for night time use. 

Finally, we cannot go through this post without mentioning the intricate packaging. The cream comes in a cube that Virginia Stone calls ‘The Luxador’. It’s 100 per cent recyclable concrete stone and has thermal insulating properties to protect the cream’s active ingredients and maintain its longevity. The Luxador is engraved with the company’s simple logo and pattern and has a magnetic stone lid. It’s quite solid and heavy, so be careful if you travel with it or keep it on your bathroom counter for décor and safekeeping.

You can buy ‘Eyes’ for Kavesi (15ml) here for $185. The price is quite high, but you don’t need very much and could spot treat certain areas rather than put it all over your face. 

Friday Favourites – Cleansers

As we all know the key essential to any good skin care routine is to use a gentle and effective cleanser, not only to remove the daily grime but the residue of our makeup. However, during our research for this feature, we at The Amazing Blog found that there were quite a few readily available high street brands, but they were mainly water-based with chemicals. This combination strips your skin of its natural oils, leaving your face feeling tight and dry rather than supple and refreshed. That is why we wanted to share some of our Friday Favourites which are the latest #amazingfinds for oil-based cleansers and cleansing balms. We know what you’re probably thinking: ‘Oil? Won’t that clog up my skin?’ Rest assured we’ve tried and tested our choices. We all have very different skin types here at The Amazing Blog ranging from very dry to extremely oily and none of these cleansers clogged our pores.

The first #amazingfind, we found was the Jane Apothecary Soothing Cleansing Balm. This Spanish-based company was founded by Elena Padilla, a biologist and cosmetics expert, after she began breaking out when she turned 30 years old. Jane Apothecary is an award winning brand (see 2019 Beauty Shortlist here) that we have fallen in love with, and recently wrote about their Restoring Eye &  Lip Serum . Elena soon discovered the benefits of vegetable oils and plants to soothe skin as well as other women who were in a similar situation as herself. This led her to create all-natural products that ‘care for and calm the skin of women over 30 years’ while providing hydration and preventing ageing.

The Cleansing Balm’s oil and vegetable wax base gives the product a thick texture and melts in your hands to create a cleansing oil. It has marigold extract, chamomile, and aloe vera to soothe and soften your skin along with bio shea butter to help protect your skin’s natural oils. After using this product, your skin won’t feel greasy, but perfectly moisturised and clean. What made this cleansing balm worthy of a lot of love at the Beauty Shortlist Awards is that it has been specially formulated for sensitive skin as well as redness- and rosacea-prone skin while smelling fresh. Many products that treat skin conditions often smell like a hospital or have no scent. Jane Apothecary uses a mix of lemongrass, orange, and lavender essential oils to give the balm a signature strong lemongrass scent that has aromatherapeutic properties to help you relax while cleansing your face.

If you want extra soft skin, you can leave a small layer of the cleansing balm on for 20 minutes before removing it with warm water and the organic cotton wipe provided. Only a small dollop of this product is needed each time you cleanse your face, so we can safely say the price is worth what you get. You can purchase the Soothing Cleansing Balm (60ml) here for 35.54€. 

The next cleansing balm we have for you is the Nourish Cleanse Melt: Rose & Camellia. This product may look or sound familiar because we reviewed the Botanicals Nourishing Face Balm in the same beautiful scent. We’ve found and fallen in love with many products from Botanicals (check out our brand directory here) and the Nourishing Face Balm falls into the same pattern.

The company is rooted in the ‘fundamental belief that nature knows best’ and this cleansing balm has 100 per cent natural ingredients. It is also cruelty-free, vegan, and certified organic. The cleanser contains absolutely no water and is oil-based, which helps retain and maintain your skin’s natural oils rather than dry out your face. It can be used on all skin types, but the natural oils are especially useful for hydrating and healing normal-to-dry mature skin. The formula combines the oils with shea butter and green tea extract to dissolve even stubborn waterproof mascara after a long day and leave your skin feeling soft like a baby’s the next morning. What makes this balm different is that Botanicals’ cleansing balms work deep into your pores to remove any impurities, which balance and brighten your skin. While many oil-based products scare people away, this cleansing balm leaves you feeling moisturised but not greasy.

See for yourself why this cleansing balm won for Best Organic Facial Skincare at the Natural and Organic Awards. You can purchase it here (60g) for £26.  

The final product we have for you this Friday is the Joji Natural Frankincense and Sandalwood Oil Cleanser. We discovered this indie beauty brands earlier this year at a trade beauty show. The motto of Joji Natural is ‘Natural without compromise’. The company was founded in 2010 and is dedicated to creating handmade organic products that are effective, sustainable, cruelty-free, and fair trade.

 The oil cleanser is made of 100 per cent plant-based materials and is marketed as ‘a meditation in a bottle’. After using it, we can see why. As the name says, the product has frankincense and sandalwood. These are both natural oils that have immense therapeutic effects, leaving you less stressed and creating positive well-being. The formula also has a unique mix of jojoba, sweet almond, and apricot kernel oils, which soothe and moisturise skin without clogging your pores. This oil cleanser is essential in scrubbing away makeup and pollutants from the day, unlike regular cleansers. Many of the ingredients also have natural properties to fight bacteria, leaving your skin extra clean.

You can remove all of the cleanser with a warm cloth or leave some excess for your skin to soak up the all-natural oils, as recommended by Joji Natural. You can purchase the Frankincense and Sandalwood Oil Cleanser (50ml) here for £16.

Whether or not you have already made the switch to oil cleansers, please keep these products in mind not just for the summer but all year round. As mentioned earlier, they will not clog your pores or leave your skin feeling dry. However, what we like is that they all leave a nice layer of moisture giving you a glowy and goddess-like skin. Go try!