What's in my kit.

When I first started out as a Makeup Artist in 2007 I did a lot of research into products, brands, ingredients and formulations. I felt strongly that I wanted to use products that did not test on animals or harm animals. If more of us switch to using Cruelty free, or Vegan products then hopefully we can eliminate animal testing. Some of the brands use human volunteers, I mean that is great as we shouldn’t be putting anything on our skin that is potentially harmful and at least a human tester has a voice and a choice!

So I am looking for cruelty free (if it’s vegan, even better) products with great ‘good for you’ ingredients that will not aggravate or be harmful to a person, plus it must perform and work well! It’s the worst when I try something and it looks heavy and cakey or colours are not strongly pigmented.

With that in mind I began the tricky task of building my kit which has taken year to refine and I will always be adding more products as I come across them. Now where makeup is concerned there is so much marketing around; reviews, magazine write ups; adverts. and there is EVEN more now what with the mass hype of social media. It was and can still be so easy to get caught up in the frenzy of new products and brands. Don’t get me wrong some are well worth the hype!

To summarise, my kit contains a mixture of professional high performance brands, vegan products, organic and natural products, and higher end products too. Keep reading below to find out more.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Kryolan, Mehron, Ben NYE who are all professional grade makeup companies for theatre, SFX, film as well beauty were all cruelty free. Mehron is paraben free (a nasty chemical that our bodies cannot process) and uses some great formulations that are highly pigmented and hydrating as well as soothing for skin. They may not have your fancy packaging but they are still high performance products for both TV, beauty and fashion makeup. They also have a great range of really useful palettes.

Covering up 2 bruised black eyes on my bride after being in an accident days before her big day! She was so pleased with the result.

Using the colour corrective wheel to cover a red based skin tone and Arbonne liquid perfecting foundation.

Some of my favourites to use and still are are the Kryolan supra palette cream makeup, for a foundation is has all different colours, mixable, blendable and actually create a really dewy finish. Mehron do a great concealer palette, and Ben NYE pro HD powder palettes for setting makeup, de-shining on set, highlighting and contouring. It has the great banana shade in too as a pressed powder that Kim Kardashian raved about a few years back. I also have the Mehron colour correcting wheel and tattoo cover wheel which come in really handy as you can mix the products in with other foundations whether it is to cover overly red skin tones, or bruises, to tattoo covering which I have had to do for photoshoots, corporate work, and brides have even asked me to cover tattoos on their big day. One of my favourite foundations are Arbonne liquid perfecting with you can see on the right hand side pic and above.

Products I use are dermatologically tested, and I always try to use paraben and sulphate free products, most are suitable for even the most sensitive of skin. I do always check with the client for allergies and sensitivities though and we can do a patch test too. I have only had one reaction that someone had and that was with Neal’s yard antioxidant cleanser, which I think was too potent with fruit acids.

Skin care products are also a necessity in my kit. From moisturisers to cleaners, to serums.

Some of the brands I like to use are again the Arbonne skin care ranges which are fantastic, as the formulations are so clever and really refine and hydrate skin. Vitamin.sea beauty has a great vitamin toner spray that I love and I recently tried some Meadow skin care a UK based vegan company. Their moisture balm is a great base for skin under makeup.

Other brands I use are:

• Pixi Cosmetics

• Inika

• OCC

• Charlotte Tilbury

• Hourglass

• Becca

• Stila

• Kat Von D

• Inglot

• Yaby

• Cover FX

• Skindinavia

• Anastasia Beverley Hills

• Zoeva

• E.L.F

I do keep adding more products to my kit but will try and reveiw/ blog them so you can still get an idea. Hope you enjoyed reading about what is in my kit and how challenging it is to build a kit that I am proud of.

If you have any questions or recommend anything, I would love to hear about it.

Love Jen xx