Sometimes, when you’re looking for the perfect makeup brand, things can get a bit overwhelming. There’s so many brands out there to choose from it can be hard to know where to start.

Following the media hype brought on by programmes such as Sarah Beeny’s How Toxic Are You?, the demand for natural and safe cosmetic products has boomed in the UK.

This is great for us, because we get 10s of thousands of hits on our website as people look for natural alternatives, but the media hype is also good for you – it’s your opportunity to think and learn about what really is in the stuff you’re putting onto your skin on a daily basis.

At Lily Lolo we’re proud to shout that our makeup is all natural – it’s all derived from ingredients that are found in a natural state and not by chemical mixtures or reactions. We use our own FREE FROM logo as a guarantee of this promise to our customers. We’re free from; Nano Particles, Bismuth Oxychloride, Synthetic Dyes, Synthetic Fragrances, Petrochemicals and Parabens – just some of the things that have been highlighted in the media in recent months.

Perhaps those all sound like double-dutch to you? It’s certainly worth looking into a bit further. Put rather basically, Nano Particles are tiny particles (in fact 80,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair!) that can be easily inhaled. There has been very mixed reporting on the use of Nano Particles in cosmetics, so just to be on the safe side, we ensure our minerals are not milled so finely to risk the presence of these tiny particles. Don’t worry though, you’re not going to find lumps of rock in your Lily Lolo minerals – they’re all lovely and soft like silk to touch.

Then we can look at Bismuth Oxychloride, and yep potentially opening another can of worms! You might find Bismuth Oxychloride in manyother mineral brands because of the enhanced ‘sticking’ effect as it makes the minerals literally slip onto the skin. All sounds fine so far doesn’t it? Well, it’s only when you start looking at the negatives that the ingredient looks rather more sinister. Bismuth Oxychloride is often linked to the reactions that some people have when using makeup – itchiness, redness, rashes, and in extreme cases, acne. It’s actually very common to have an allergic reaction to this ingredient – so you can rest assured that we don’t use it in the Lily Lolo products.

We don’t believe in synthetic dyes and fragrances, what better than the things that occur naturally out there in the wild! There is also so much controversy about petrochemicals in cosmetics and whether they are or are not carcinogenic, we think it’s best to steer clear – you just never know do you?

Parabens are used in a lot of everyday cosmetics for their preservative properties – basically lengthening the product’s shelf life. Recent studies have shown that Parabens may not be very safe and some experts have linked them to breast cancer, so again – even though we can never be sure, we’re certainly not going to be putting them into products now or ever.

Hopefully, if you’re looking for reasons to go natural this insight will have helped, and of course, if you have any more questions don’t hesitate to drop a line to the customer services team – they’re here to answer your questions.

LL x