Product Review: W7 Very Vegan Makeup at Beauty Base

A while back the nice people at online beauty retailers Beauty Base sent me some products to try out, including products from the Himalaya Herbals line (review here) and make-up from a new range called W7 Very Vegan. The range is certified vegan by the Vegan Society.

It was rather a nice treat to get make-up through the post:

I am not an expert at applying make-up – certainly with nowhere near the expertise of my daughter’s generation and their layers of contouring and face-shaping make-up.  I know what I like, and I know what works for me. This being the case I got Little Lady to help with testing the make-up and the babies to help me take pictures.

The first product I tried was the matte bronzer. The packaging of these products feels a bit basic with the white and green colour scheme, which is reflected in the price and probably target audience.  This bronzer compact had a nice mirror in the lid which is a handy touch. 

The bronzer itself is fine and it took quite a few strokes with the brush to get some colour.  The effect is fairly subtle on mine/my girls’ warm medium brown skin tone.  I am not convinced this would be  the product I pick for bold contouring (if I knew how to do it), but this is probably more suitable for a subtle effect, or for an amateur like me who doesn’t know where to put bronzer (according to Little Lady), this is a nice one to use for a pop of colour instead.

The next product we tried was the W7 Very Vegan eye liner.  Little Lady tried it with both the dipping brush in the lid and her own brush.  She wasn’t keen on the brush as she prefers a slightly harder one with a finer tip. She did like the formula and I agreed that it went on smoothly.  My only gripe is that the colour could have been a bit more intense.  We had to go over the line a little to get the intensity we wanted.

I am partial to mascara, as my eyes are the feature I like to dress up most. I have my favourite products and over the years have stuck with the one I like most, finding most others to be not as good in comparison.  So I did not expect much from the W7 VeryVegan Mascara.  The first thing I noticed was the brush - big and full, hinting at good coverage of lashes and effective separating.  I have to admit I did not try this on, but LL did and really liked it.

My favourite thing to try was the W7 Very VeganLipstick, which we had in Righteous Red, a very bright and what looked to me, cool red.  I usually go for darker and warmer burgundy and berry shades.  One of the problems I have had with lipsticks is finding a red shade that doesn’t have animal products.  It’s so common for the red colour in lipsticks to come from cochineal or carmine, red dye from an animal source, which I am not keen to use where I could be ingesting it. Because of this I was very pleased to try a red that it was very clear was vegan.

I read years ago that the best place to try lipstick is on the finger tips not the back of the hand, to get a truer idea of what the colour would look like.  Not sure if this is accurate, but I usually test on the fingertips.

The shade of the lipstick was not one I would normally go for, it looked very bold on, but I enjoyed wearing it and will do so again.  The texture of the lipstick is very smooth and goes on almost like a lip balm - moisturising and quite slick.  It doesn’t have the staying power of the matte liquid lipsticks I am used to but stayed on for a few hours.  Most likely I would mix this with a darker colour or the liquid lipstick to get different shades of red.

The items that the girls were most excited to test was the W7 Very Vegan Eye Eco Palette. This is a vegan version of W7’s most popular palette Colour me Buff. The palette has 12 colours with a range of nudes and browns that would complement most skin tones.

One of the babies excitedly modelled the colours for us.  Like the bronzer I needed a good few strokes of the colour to get a good amount of colour on Darlings arm.  I would have assumed these are not very god, I go for pigmented colours because I find a lot of lighter colours just disappear into my eyelids and are barely visible.  But on applying the gold on my eyes, I found it nicely pigmented, a really flattering colour and long lasting despite the slightly oily skin on my eyelids (it looked really nice with the red lipstick too). Little Lady happily snapped this up for her own makeup collection, her only comment was that some of the colours were a little similar.

In all it’s a nice range of products in popular colours at a fab price.  The thing I was most pleased with is that it is vegan certified and I can wear red lipstick with confidence again.

Disclaimer: I received this product at no cost to me for the purpose of testing it for review. The opinions expressed here are my own and from my own honest experience of using the product.