Naturalla Beauty

Most mainstream primers are effective because they contain silicones, which act like a layer of plastic between your eyelid and your makeup.  The silicones make the primer basically impermeable, so any oils your eyelid produces aren't able to reach your eye shadow and cause visible wear or creasing.  Instead of relying on a silicone barrier, Faerie Organic uses boron nitride, calcium carbonate, and silica, all of which have oil absorbing properties.  (And in case you're wondering, silica is different from the aforementioned silicones.  It's the naturally occuring mineral that is a base ingredient in silicone based polymers like dimethicone and cyclopentasiloxane, but is, in its natural state, a safe ingredient.)  

Faerie Organic describes Forty Winks as "a soft cream to powder finish," which is a great description.  When I first dip into the product, it has a slightly tacky cream consistency, but as I blend it onto the eyelid it quickly dries down to a soft powder finish.  The primer is also a creamy white colour, which helps your eye shadows appear more vibrant.

On an average day, I do my makeup around 8 in the morning and I don't remove it until 9 or 10 at night.  For the sake of comparison, with no primer, I'll usually start to see creasing two to three hours after I do my makeup.  With my Detrivore Cosmetics primer, I'm usually good for about eight hours before it starts looking muddy.  With the Faerie Organic, my eye makeup not only lasts the full 13-14 hour day, it also looks virtually identical when I remove it to how it looked freshly applied!  Almost unheard of for a primer with such clean ingredients!  

I will mention that there were a few days when I kept my makeup on for longer - 16-18 hours - and on those days I did notice a small amount of wear.  Apparently my left eyelid produces more oil than my right, because it was consistently the left eye that showed wear on these days.  The makeup on my right eye stayed perfect, even through an 18 hour day!

To wrap things up, if you're someone who's been searching for a natural eye shadow primer that can compare to mainstream primers like Urban Decay Primer Potion and Too Faced Shadow Insurance, I'd definitely recommend checking out Faerie Organic!  The ingredients are great, it's reasonably priced at $14, and it's by far the most effective natural eye primer I've used.  Forty Winks has quickly become a staple in my routine and is something I can definitely see myself repurchasing once I use it up.  

Have you found a natural eye shadow primer that works?  Let me know in the comments!

Disclosure: Product provided for my honest review.  I was under no obligation to write a positive review in return for free product, nor was I compensated for this post.  All opinions are my own.

As I mentioned when I posted my Detrivore eye shadow swatches, I wanted to give the primer a good try before I reviewed it.  I've been using it for about a month now and I'm so impressed!  Pretty much ever since I started using loose eye shadows I've known that a primer would be a good idea to help with adhesion, but as I'm sure a some of you have also found, finding a natural/non-toxic primer that actually works is a huge challenge.  A lot of natural primers are made mostly out of oils and waxes and end up seeming a lot like lip balm.  These kinds might work okay if you have dry eyelids, but for those of us with oilier eyelids, they just speed up the creasing process.

Detrivore's primer contains oils and waxes, but also has ingredients like titanium dioxide, mica, and glycerine, and the end result far out-performs your 'lip balm' style primers.  (Full ingredients are on Detrivore's website.) It's pretty firm, so I've found it applies best with my finger, which warms up the product just enough so that it applies smoothly onto my lids.  I usually apply it to both lids at once and then wait another 30 seconds to a minute before applying eye shadow to the first eye.  Without the wait I find that my eye shadow ends up applying a bit patchy and uneven, but with the wait, it acts as a perfect sticky base for eye shadow to cling to.  It also helps eye shadows to last longer and makes colors more vivid - some appear almost foiled.  It's a yellowish color in the pot, but since you only need a little, it's clear when applied and should work on all skin tones. 

Cost-wise, Detrivore's primer is great as well.  For only $6, you get a 5-gram jar filled all the way to the top.  It might look small, but I've been using mine about 4 times a week for over a month now and I've only just made a slight dip in it.  It will definitely last a while.

I also wanted to post some pictures of the primer in action (below the cut).  I've used 5 eye shadows and one pure glitter, all from different companies, so you can see it doesn't just work with Detrivore's own eye shadows.  The top row is over Detrivore's primer and the bottom is on bare skin.   

I'd read a few positive reviews of Detrivore's Eye Shadow Primer, so when its ingredients didn't immediately throw up any red flags for me (super rare with primers!), I decided to place an order.  While I was at it, I also picked up eye shadow samples of White Chapel, Vacancy, Death Valley, Hemoglobin, Shroud, Faithless, Guillotine, and Petty.  I also received free samples of Bone, Coward, and Contamination.

I haven't tried these out yet, other than for swatching, so this won't be much of a review, but I will say that Detrivore has great customer service.  Eye shadow ingredients are only listed by collection, so they have a long "may contain" list.  Before purchasing, I emailed back and forth a few times to ask about ingredients for specific colours, as well as to ask a couple questions about the primer and I always got quick and helpful responses.  Eye shadow samples are $1 and are very generous. 

My camera didn't do a good job picking up the gorgeous sparkles in most of these - Petty, Bone, and Coward are from the matte collection, but the rest all contain some degree of shimmer.  They're all very pigmented and are more vibrant than they appear in these photos.  On first impressions only, Shroud, Faithless, Death Valley, and Hemoglobin stand out to me as particularly gorgeous.  I can't wait to try these out on my eyes next!  I also haven't tried out the primer yet, but a review will follow once I've had a chance to do so.  All swatches were done dry on bare skin.