Vegan Hair Dye

A while ago I bought this hair dye from Holland and Barrett and I’ve only just got around to using it.

I have pretty dark brown hair (with the odd patch of white ones!) so wasn’t sure how well it would work, but I am pleased with the results! I don’t think you can tell very well in this photo, but it has given my hair a nice reddish tinge.

I hate taking photos of myself! But thought if I was going to do a post about hair dye then I should really – I’m aware I look like a bit of an idiot!

It was really easy to use. I did a test on a bit of hair because I’m often allergic to things so thought it was a good idea. All you have to do is pour one little bottle of dye into a bigger bottle and shake it lots, then apply to your hair with the plastic gloves provided. The bottle has a small applicator end where I guess you apply it to your roots but I just ended up squeezing loads into my hands and shoving it on my hair! I have a lot of hair 🙂 I was a bit worried I’d end up with a red parting/forehead/ears but it all came off fine when I washed it out. And I didn’t stain anything in the bathroom, well done me! Once you’ve got it all over your hair you leave it for 30-40 minutes and then rinse it off in the shower. You rinse until the water runs clear and then use the sachet of shampoo that comes in the box, and the conditioner. My hair feels lovely and soft. I was pleasantly surprised with the whole thing – easy to use and no mess!

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Hope Street Skincare

My wonderfully kind friend Laura got me a Hope Street gift set for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and since I’d never heard of them before, I thought it might be useful to mention them here in case it’s new to anyone else.

Hope Street is 100% vegan, and also uses no:

• petrochemicals or mineral oils
• parabens
• sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS or SLES)
• artificial colours
• artificial fragrances

Here’s what arrived through my door:

Lemongrass and May Chang body wash, body milk and hand cream

I love this stuff! It smells great, and I really like that it’s ingredients are nice and natural.
Click here to have a look at the Hope Street website

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Original Source

I usually use Lush shower gel, but after my last purchase there cost me a packet (£16.75 actually) I thought it might be wise to alternate between Lush shower gels and less expensive ones.

I’d heard some Original Source stuff was vegan hadn’t thought to buy it for ages, and it turns out they work with the Vegan Society and many of their products are marked as vegan.

At first I was a bit confused, because they have the vegan society logo in the bottom left corner of the website at all times, which made me think all their products were vegan, until I saw they used honey in some (so I wasn’t sure if this meant other ones had other non-vegan ingredients in). So I got in touch with them and they informed me that all their products except the ones with honey in are vegan.

Not bad at all! But just ditch the honey, Original Source! Leave the bees alone.

from the Original Source website

I love refreshing shower gels and this lime one was great. Really zingy and fresh, and quite reasonably priced (£2.15 from Boots).

It smells almost exactly like green jelly babies

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SUPERdrug

In my lunchbreak on Friday I wandered into Superdrug in Oxford. I’d heard things about some of Superdrug’s own brand products being vegan, so thought I’d investigate it and see if I could find some nice new face cream.

Holy crap. That place is awesome! Suffice to say I came out with considerably more than planned.

• Sensitive whitening toothpaste : £1.25
• Anti-perspirant deodrants: £1.19 each
• Vitamin E intensive moisturising cream: £1.99
• Essential moisturising cream: 99p
• Tea tree exfoliating face wash: £2.99
• Tea tree nose strips: £3.99
• Exfoliating face wash: £2.59

I’ve had real difficulty finding vegan-friendly anti-perspirant and sensitive toothpaste in the past, so I am really excited about this! And reasonable prices too.

Superdrug’s own brand toiletries are labelled according to their suitability, so lots of things say “suitable for vegetarians and vegans” on them. It’s so nice to be able to just check the back of things, rather than looking things up online, paying over the odds, or reading lists of insane ingredients and searching for statements about animal testing/ingredients. Just looking for the word VEGAN is magic.

I’ll probably write a bit about each of the products I bought as I use them, but as of yet I’ve only tried this cream:

And it was really nice. A basic, fragrance-free moisturiser, nice and light and not greasy.

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