Chic Vegan

Traditional deodorants are overflowing with horribly toxic ingredients like aluminum (linked to breast cancer and Alzheimer’s), Parabens, PEGs, petrochemicals, and synthetics. When applied liberally every single day, you can imagine what the buildup of these chemicals do to your body as you grow older.

But the truth is, nobody likes to be the smelly person in the room.  Although it requires slightly more work it is very possible to smell great while remaining toxin-free. I believe that a well rounded regimen can completely eliminate any funky odors that might spring about, even if you are an excessively sweaty mess running laps during a summer day. Everyone is unique and your regime really depends on your needs and lifestyle but here is what works for me.  This process works for me through hours of circus training, yoga or running outside in the heat.

• Eat a healthy vegan diet consisting of whole foods. (no refined foods, sugars, and preservatives).
• Wash with Dr Bronner’s Tea Tree soap. It is naturally antimicrobial!
• Allow pits to dry completely. Then apply Weleda citrus spray. I typically keep my arms up and frolic around my apartment like a lunatic until they dry.
• Apply some baby powder to help with sweating. I currently use Burt’s Bees Baby Bee powder, but will be switching to another brand after I am out. (BB’s works wonders but is owned by Clorox – a very un-vegan company!) Perhaps Farm Baby?
• Halfway through the day, or right before embarking on intense physical activity I refresh the Weleda spray with a small bottle in my bag.

I think the best way to combat the stinkies is with a healthy diet, a combination of products and re-application.

Here are my favorite products that work by neutralizing odor causing bacteria, instead of just masking smells like many natural deodorants tend to do.

Weleda spray deodorant

Erbaviva Lemon Sage deodorant

Pit Putty by Bubble and Bee

Miessence Tahitian Breeze Roll-on Deodorant

Aubrey Organics Calendula Blossom Natural Deodorant Spray

Thai Crystal Deodorant Stone

You know you’re addicted. I have been hooked on the stuff since I was about 12. A few hours without it leaves lips dry, cracked and yearning for more. It is a common epidemic, and most of us struggle with it every day. Lip gloss addiction is a serious matter! What’s worse than the addiction is the harmful chemicals and funky animal ingredients that lurk in most glosses and balms. You will find that once you switch over to a natural lip treatment, the dry and cracked lips mend themselves and your addiction becomes less physical and remains just psychological. The problem I personally have with natural lip stuff is that many times it contains beeswax or lanolin – deeming it unvegan!  Here are some all around winners, and also how you can save money and agony by just making your own!

Lip glosses for you glam girlies:

Zuzu Luxe Lip Gloss, $18
Available in tons of colors and contains great ingredients. Zuzu Luxe has a whole line of wonderful products and you can find them at Whole Foods!

Ecco Bella Good For You Lip Gloss, $15
There is a mirror stuck to the site of the package! How wonderful! Just a note that not all of Ecco Bella’s lip glosses are vegan, some contain carmine. Alternative Outfitters carries only their vegan products!

The All Natural Face Lip Gloss, $4
Great ingredients coming from a small vegan business. And hella cheap!

For you low maintenance balm girls (myself included):

Crazy Rumours Lip Balm, $6
Totally fun, all natural and vegan balms.  Check out their uniquely themed balm lines such as “Brew” and “Fresh Squeezed”.

Pussy Pucker Pots, $6
Hands down, the best product name ever(and tagline: “The tastiest lips north of the hips”). PPP’s line has 12 yummy flavors and is made with the finest ingredients.

Make your own vegan lip balm!

I don’t have a personal lip-balm making recipe….yet. But this one from ehow is amazing.

You will need:

• 1 oz hard wax (soy wax works well)
• 1 oz solid-at-room-temperature oil (coconut oil, avocado oil, mango butter, or shea butter)
• .75 – .8 oz another additional hard-at-room-temperature oil (cocoa butter, floral waxes, or palm oil)
• 2 oz liquid oil (jojoba oil or olive oil)
• Essential oils (optional, your choice) – maximum 8 drops for each lip balm
• Microwave-safe cup or bowl with pour spout
• Digital scale sensitive to at least .1 oz (a postage scale will usually work for this)
• Stirring spoon
• Dropper
• Lip balm tubes/jars/tins (up to 15)

Common store-bought sunscreens are absolutely overflowing with toxic chemicals, endocrine disruptors and cancer causing nasties. This is incredibly ironic for a product that is supposed to be protecting us from the cancer-causing effects of the sun. As always, the Environmental Working Group has done a great job at compiling all the information you need to aid in choosing the proper sunscreen that will protect you and your family in every way. This includes a hall of shame, and the best products you can buy. Below are some of my faves.

On top of SPFs you can protect yourself from UVA and UVB rays by wearing a hat and sunglasses, and eating a diet rich in EFAs(oils), vegetables and legumes. It is proven that a healthy diet will reduce your risk of burning way more than any topical agent will. Also remember your body needs Vitamin D to function. As a vegan it is hard to get Vitamin D from a non-fortified source, and the sun’s rays provide us with tons of D. That being said you may want to use sunscreen instead of sunblock (I personally never go over SPF 30, and I am very pale), but as always you should take your personal experience and your own needs into account when deciding this.

Marie Veronique Organics Kid Safe Screen, SPF 25
This lightweight and quick-absorbing formula works just as great for adults as it does for kids. It contains no harmful chemicals, nanoparticles, parabens, petroleum products, fillers, waxes or fragrances. This is my favorite sunscreen – I carry it in my bag!

Desert Essence Age Reversal SPF 30 Mineral Sunscreen
This lotion contains Vitamin E, Pomegranate Extract, and Grape Seed Extract. All to help reduce free-radicals and nourish your skin while protecting it!

Devita Daytime Solar Protective Moisturizer SPF 30
This fancy little guy absorbs quickly and completely and contains two different sun screens for ultimate solar protection. This formula was created specifically for those sensitive to breakouts.

California Baby No Fragrance SPF 30+ Sunscreen Lotion
Did you know that The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states that if exposure to the sun is unavoidable and your baby is under 6 months, a non-chemical sunscreen should be used? That is why your best bet is to use baby or kid sunscreens This one is awesome!

Loving Naturals SPF 30+ Sunscreen
This formula is water-resistant and made up of some outstanding all-natural and organic ingredients.

Smelling good is what girls do best – so why not do it sans nasty chemicals, toxins and with products that don’t hurt any living creatures in the process?

This used to be a hard and complicated endeavor, but much like all things vegan, you now have tons of delicious smelling goodness to choose from! The following are top choices in the world of ethical perfumery. If you are on more of a budget you can troll Etsy for some great scents or make your own!

Tallula Jane has 5 enchanting smells to choose from: Tallulah, Gotham, 333, Misae, and Leotie. All fragrances are organic and vegan and hand blended and poured using all natural ingredients. This makes each batch subtly different and your smell will always be unique!

A Perfume Organic carries only organic, vegan and locally made fragrances. APO’s perfume is free of petrochemicals, solvents, dyes, pesticides, and synthetic chemicals known to cause cancer.  They carry four fragrances, each distinctly different:  Green, Perfumed Wine-Rosé, Urban Organic, and White Magik.

Florame’s eau de toilette fragrances are true nose candy and very high quality. They offer over 8 simple fragrances that are organic, vegan and synthetic free. When sprayed on the skin they blend with your naturally occurring pheromones to create a sexy scent!

Everyone’s favorite: Pacifica carries tons of scents that are all free of parabens, animal testing, animal ingredients or artificial colors.  Of course they are 100% VEGAN and also Gluten-free.

Make your own perfume!

Crating your own perfume is simple, totally cheap and tons of fun! Try this simple recipe to create your own completely one-of-a-kind fragrance. You can buy most ingredients online or even at your local health food store.

1. Pour the alcohol into your bowl. Add the essential oils one drop at a time into the alcohol* in the bowl, stirring slowly after each addition. Make sure that you stir slowly, but long enough to completely disperse the oils.
2. Allow the blend of oils and alcohol to stand undisturbed for 48 hours.
3. Add the distilled water. Stir it slowly until it is completely dispersed.
4. Place the mixture in a cool, dark place where it won’t be disturbed for at least three weeks. This will allow the perfume to mature.
5. Filter the resulting pure perfume through a coffee filter to remove any sediment that may have formed. Bottle your perfume into colored glass bottles with a stopper. Enjoy it as you would any commercial perfume.

*You can use commercial perfumer’s alcohol (suggested) or vodka!

This is a guest post from Wendy Conrad of the awesome blog, The Vision Quest of Life. This is what she has to say about herself:

“I’m a Florida native currently living in the North Georgia Mountains with my husband and two dogs. My vegan path looks like this:
All along I was uncomfortable with eating animals.  After watching “Food, Inc.” in November 2009 I finally became vegetarian.  As I learned more about the dairy industry, I became vegan a couple of months later.  I wanted to learn all I could, and then share it with others.  My transformation is taking place right here on the internet!  Just like Mandi, I do not feel that becoming vegan means I have to lose my pre-existing sense of style or eat only twigs and berries.  I think breaking the mold of what people perceive a vegan to be is indirectly doing great things for the animals.
I love to write, and so I started blogging to share what I’m discovering about being vegan, as well as other things like great movies, books, poems, and bath & body products.”

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~Lao Tzu

Before I started eating vegan, I started veganizing my bathroom. This can appear to be a daunting task when you think of all the products that we use in the bathroom. And what does it mean to veganize the bathroom anyway? For me, it means using items that do not contain any animal products and that have not been tested on animals.  There are many companies that don’t test on animals, but still use animal-derived ingredients in their products.  I also wanted them to be as natural and organic as possible.  Seem difficult? It’s not. It just takes a little leg work.  And once you find some vegan products and companies that you love, you really don’t have to think about it anymore. (more…)

Hi everyone, I’m Amanda from amoderngirlslife.blogspot.com and veganera.com. I am absolutely delighted to be invited as a guest blogger for Chic Vegan as I LOVE the site and love receiving the regular e-updates.  I’m 25 and live in sunny (well not so much lately) Noosa, Queensland, Australia.

As Chic Vegan is all about being vegan AND chic, I thought I’d share with you how we do this in the land down under.  Living in Australia as a vegan has its challenges.  For example, I was called Un-Australian on Australia Day because I was not eating a sausage and drinking a beer.  This is the mentality of the majority of Australians.  I’m not even joking – Aussies are bogans.  Ok, maybe that’s a little harsh but it seems like Australia is a little behind the rest of the world when it comes to leading a compassionate lifestyle or even an environmentally friendly one.  The papers are still riddled with ‘Is Climate Change Real or a Hoax?’ type of articles and many continue to ignore the signs all around us.  Unfortunately, it seems as though it will take an almost certain natural disaster that will wipe out or inflict damage directly to us before many people see the light.  No offence Australia.

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Its about that time of year again. The time when your skin gets scaly, scratchy, red, chapped and all other kinds of gross. Between the dry heat from indoor heating systems to the bitter cold wind, and then the boiling hot showers you take to try to compensate for the bitter cold wind… it’s just a big old mess. The only way to restore your epidermis to its naturally silky smooth condition is to moisturize, moisturize, moisturize!

But we don’t want to slather on heaps of chemicals or animal-tested gunk, now do we ladies? No, our ethical tushes deserve much better. Try these moist treats for every inch of your bits and pieces. (Oh, BTW most links go to Amazon where everything is hella cheap!) (more…)

Remember those old Herbal Essences commercials?

They made natural hair care sexy and beautiful. Their ingredient list is long and scientific sounding though, which makes us wonder if it is all that natural. Most of them turn out to be manipulated natural ingredients. Either way, these days, being “green” is so trendy you can’t walk down a hair care aisle without all sorts of plants, and all natural ingredients screaming at you from the bottles. Salons are developing their own natural hair care lines and paying special attention to their clients. I’m a little wary about buying hair products that might not be safe, for my hair or the world. So instead of diving right in, I sat down with Rebecca from Bubbles Salon in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA to talk with her about some products we conscious chicks can use without fear.
BG: So, tell me some of your favorite hair products?

Beka: Bubbles Salon makes our own line, Cibu which contains “Spring Roll” . The whole line is sulfate free, paraben free (possible cancer causing agents) and is made with natural ingredients. We test our products on our own stylists, not on animals. The packaging is made from 85 percent post consumer materials and is made in the USA, meaning we cut down on carbon emissions to distribute our products. My other fave is Purology, also made with natural ingredients. It’s 100 percent vegan and most of the packaging is completely recyclable with your regular plastics. Both of these lines are also color safe which is a plus. (more…)

If there is one thing that vegans know how to do well, it’s read labels.  While we always check our product labels to make sure they don’t contain any gross animal by-products or have been tested on animals, do we look any further than that? Is the vegan stamp of approval  good enough or should we question the long term health effects of every last product we use?

The beauty industry is completely unregulated. That means that any company can put anything they want in the products you slather all over your body every single day. Scary? It is. These toxic ingredients range from proven endocrine disruptors (they attach to your estrogen receptors and disrupt your own estrogen from working naturally in your body) to neurotoxins (are toxic to brain and nervous system) to carcinogens (cause cancer) to ingredients directly linked to causing cancer and birth defects. (more…)

Today is World Vegan Day, the celebration of the creation of The Vegan Society and the kick off to World Vegan Month. This month is dedicated to spreading the awareness of veganism and the benefits of a vegan lifestyle. Check out the list of events on the WVD website.

LUSH is also celebrating WVD by offering a free vegan bath bomb or soap on orders over $55. Only untill November 3rd with the promo code: VEGAN08DAY. Employees of LUSH have also vowed to go vegan today for at least 24 hours. Shop assistants will be dressed like vegetables and giving out vegan treats, so if you live near a LUSH store please feel free to stop in and see the spectacle. Just in case you are not aware, LUSH always sells all veg friendly and cruelty free products with 76% of their items clearly marked as vegan.