Until I discovered the wonderful Sweet and Safe Mascara from Absolution I was continually jumping back and forth between conventional and natural mascaras as I hadn’t managed to find a natural one that managed the job quite as well as their counterparts. It was the one area of my beauty regime that I just hadn’t managed to switch over and I kept having a little nagging voice in the back of my head telling me it had to be possible to find an alternative. As soon as I tried the Absolution mascara though I switch over instantly and never went back (and of course wrote a blog post about it which you can find here). It managed to make me completely forget about all the other mascaras for quite a while…….that is until I found Lily Lolo’s……Big Lash! Straight away I could see that this one was a real contender for the crown so I thought it was a great opportunity to pit these two against each other in a battle royale! What I want in a good mascara is length, separation and of course volume so let’s see which one comes out on top!
The Price
Big Lash is priced at 16.90€ for 6.5ml against 27€ for 10ml Sweet & Safe Absolution. The Big lash is cheaper per mascara but the quantity is smaller, so when you compare them by volume they ultimately cost about the same price.
The Packaging
The packaging is very similar both sitting very comfortably in the natural cosmetics trend. Entirely black matte, sober and chic with the logos inscribed in white.
The Brush
Lily Lolo’s Big Lash Vegan Mascara – At first I was a little scared as the brush is rather big and I was worried it was going to be quite messy and cover my entire eyelid but in the end it was OK. This mascara applies very easily, despite its big brush.
Sweet & Safe Absolution Mascara – The brush is dense, smaller than the Big Lash and I would describe it as a pretty classic brush.
Personally, I have no real preference in terms of the brushes as I like both, they are easy to handle and allow you to easily apply mascara all the way down to the roots.
The Ingredients
Lily Lolo’s Big Lash Vegan Mascara – The formulation is vegan but is not certified organic. 95% of the ingredients are of natural origin. The key ingredients are cornflower floral water (fortified), jojoba oil (nourishes) and carnauba wax (promotes the volume effect).
My usual way to check if any ingredients are harmful is to visit a site called ‘the truth about cosmetics’. There are two ingredients that are questionable: Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, (a film-forming agent obtained by hard chemical processes) and polysorbate 20 (an emulsifier made from a particularly toxic and polluting gas, ethylene oxide). This seems like such a shame!
Sweet & Safe Absolution Mascara – This mascara is not vegan (contains beeswax) but it’s certified organic. 98% of the total ingredients are of natural origin and 22% of the total ingredients are from organic farming. The key ingredients are abyssinian oil (nourishes), castor oil (fortifies and provides shine), carnauba wax (promotes the volume effect) and beeswax (protects and separates the eyelashes).
The formulation is great, all the ingredients are rated good to very good so this is a huge bonus point for Sweet & Safe!
The result
Here is a Before/After comparison to give you a visual idea of how the two mascaras perform against each other. I applied 2 layers and didn’t use an eyelash curler.
The Big Lash It lengthens and separates my fine lashes very well. I really like its intensity and the fact that it is very black on the eyelashes. On the other hand I think it gives a little spider leg type effect, what do you think? It also tends to leave small clumps at the end of the eyelashes, but nothing too big worry about really. It produces a beautiful volume but not as much as the Sweet and Safe.
The Sweet and Safe definitely brings more volume than the Big Lash. My eyelashes are thicker and fuller however it seemed to lengthen them a little less the the Big Lash. Like the Big Lash, the black color is well pigmented and holds all day without making you look like a panda. It also curls the lashes well. One little advantage I like is that its larger size meant the tube lasts a really long time!
After all of this testing I have to admit that my heart still lies with the Sweet & Safe from Absolution. It just impresses me more slightly as it meets all of my requirements, so for the moment remains my favourite :) Admittedly though, the Big Lash follows a very close second but I personally I prefer to have more volume than length :) Conventional brands had really better start upping their game because the organic/natural makeup is going to wipe the floor with them in every regard soon enough!
Have you tried one of these mascaras? What did you think about them?
While I haven’t tried either of these brands I have seen Lily Lolo around. The look using Sweet and Safe mascara looks a better win indeed, although I like the length the other mascara gave as well. Sometimes it’s that one minor detail that makes such a difference…