Who is that Green Chick?
The Green Makeup Artist is Aimee Valentine, a writer, cartoonist, and professional makeup artist living and working in San Francisco. She has over 10 years of experience in the cosmetics industry, having represented mainstream as well as alternative lines in L.A., Montreal, Pittsburgh, Charlottesville, and San Francisco. She works primarily with Bay Area Sustainable Brides, who want to go green all the way down the aisle.
Check out her website at greenmakeupartist.com
Kimberly K. Taylor said,
June 10, 2008 @ 3:22 am
Aimee…you are fabulous and infomative. It’s like cooking..all the best ingedients have to come together to make an outstanding unforgetable dish. Going gorgeous & Green means haveing all the knowledge to make smarter makeup choices. Your passion for Green pours over in your words and creates an excitment for those of us reading. I’m catching the Green buzz and I can’t wait to further my reserch.
Kimberly
Hanna Rifkin said,
August 7, 2008 @ 3:26 am
I love reading your blog. Your tone is entertaining and your advice is realistic. I hadn’t thought about going greener before I found your site (or wearing concealer), but I sure am glad I did! Keep up the good detective work and soon we will all be greener and at our prettiest. I appreciate your honest feedback too.
Georgia R. White said,
October 14, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
Aimee, I’m just in the beginning stages of going “green” and I was pleased to come across your website. It’s easy enough nowadays to find green makeup, but yours is the first blog dedicated to finding what truly works out there. As my skin goes through its chemical withdrawal, it’s really nice to have you as a natural makeup resource! Kudos!
Elena said,
December 3, 2008 @ 4:09 am
Amazing blog. I have bookmarked you and will be coming back
Sara said,
April 27, 2009 @ 11:37 pm
I would love for your blog to have a link to add it to an RSS feed like Google’s.
greenmakeupartist said,
May 10, 2009 @ 1:08 am
I’ll see if I can do that. Thanks!
Nadine said,
May 9, 2009 @ 8:55 pm
Hello Aimee,
I found your blog at random and I have to pay you a big compliment for your honest and in-depth approach to find the most natural skin care and make-up products. Especially, I enjoyed your article about fashion magazines and what they claim “natural” and “organic” – as that’s something which is bugging me, too (first I wrote letters to the editors, then I simply stopped reading those magazines).
Keep up the good work!
Nadine
P.S.: You’re wrong concerning Dr. Hauschka’s concealer shades
. They are not embracing the German population. We have many pale girls over here and even the lightest shade is far too dark for them (I speak first-hand, although I love many other Hauschka products and live near the headquarters, the concealer is rather, well… mediocre).
greenmakeupartist said,
May 10, 2009 @ 1:08 am
Thanks for reading, Nadine! I’m such a Hauschka fan, I hope they get their concealer act together some day–they could easily corner the market if they did!
lulie said,
November 16, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
great idea for a site. do you also deal in cosmetics that are titanium free and bismuth oxy free? i notice that all the natural brands i’ve seen are full of titanium, and apparently that’s very toxic, especially to breathe.
i am having a hard time finding really natural makeup in san francisco (just went to pharmaca and all their products, including hauschka have black-list ingredients).
i would love makeup help (not a bride, that was 20 years ago) but need to know about organic lines/toxin free besides parabens.
thank you so much!
greenmakeupartist said,
November 16, 2009 @ 11:29 pm
Hi Lulie! I’m really glad you brought up the issue of Titanium Dioxide. The Cosmetic Safety Database ranks it somewhere between 1-4 out of 9 levels of toxicity. What pushes this ingredient forward on the scale is INHALATION, (not absorption through the skin–titanium has a low absorption rate) which occurs especially when using products containing nano-particles, something to watch out for if you’re a mineral makeup or loose powder user, anyway. Titanium and Zinc have long been the “go to” physical sunscreen agents for natural cosmetic lines who don’t want to use chemical sunscreens such as Avobenzone, Octocrylene, Oxybenzone, PABAs, and Padimate-O. Is Zinc any better? According to the CSD, non-nano Zinc gets a 1-6 rating, while nano Zinc gets 2-10!
We know this much: We want to stay away from nano particles (I have clients who also find Bismuth Oxychloride irritates their skin, while CSD gives it only a 1)
and yet we still HAVE to protect our skin from harmful UVA/UVB rays; So can we find a way to do this as safely as possible? I’d recommend using liquid or creme sunscreen products, or my all-time favorite product, “The Tinted Moisturizer”. It’s got skin care, sun care, and a light glow in one product. 100% Pure’s tinted moisturizer is great for you since for it’s fruit based, rather than mineral based, but you’ll still have the physical sunscreen. Personally, I think the risk of skin cancer probably outweighs the risk of inhalation or absorption on this one. Here’s the ingredient list: Pigments of Peach, Apricot, Carrot, Pomegranate, Goji Berry and Tomato, White Tea, Cucumber Juice, Aloe Juice, Acai and Pomegranate Oil, Vitamin E (a-tocopherol), Vitamin C (ascorbyl palmitate), Chamomile and Lavender wax, extracts of Rosemary, Oregano, Thyme, Grapefruit Seed, Goldenseal and Cinnamon, Lavender Essential Oil. SUNSCREEN ACTIVE INGREDIENTS: 15% Titanium Dioxide and 10% Zinc Oxide
To avoid titanium altogether, you might steer clear of mineral lines, and stay within “color” categories. Titanium will usually be found in foundations and powders (Titanium and Zinc are also used as lightening agents.) To even out your skin tone, you might be able to use a clean liquid concealer and mix it with a bit of moisturizer to make your own titanium free tinted moisturizer/foundation. I’ll do some more investigating on this front. Thanks for the nudge!