The Top Line:

Not for us. Frankly, this doesn’t work as well as normal mascara (in terms of volume, length, curl, etc.) and usability. However, we will keep trying KeepingItNatural Cake mascara and other natural mascaras to see if we can pick up some tricks to share with you.

We know we’re not supposed to touch our face - but we do. Every time we wore this mascara during lock down, the reaction from our plus-one was: “your mascara is all over your face.” We will keep looking and learning.

The Breakdown:

• Cost & Products: $19 for 1 tin of mascara

• How ‘Clean’ Is This? Mineral ingredients, so overall, pretty clean. Ingredients are listed on the website for you to peruse.

• Packaging: A small aluminum tin - that’s great

• Purchasing & Shipping: It’s Etsy, +a flat $3.50 for shipping

• Good to Know: There is definitely a learning curve with this zero-waste product.

  We loved dealing shop owner at KeepingItNatural - she is super helpful and very quick to respond. We had an issue with our first mascara and she sent a second one right away.

• Coupons: None

• Whats Your Impact? No more plastic! As daily users, we are pretty diligent about changing mascara every 3-4 months or so,

The Efficacy

Mascara is our desert island makeup product. We have tried a lot: Japanese mascaras are our favorite and we generally do not like waterproof, even though we wear contacts.

• It takes a bit of “work” to use this product: it’s not just popping the spool out of its case

• We have slightly oily skin, so that probably makes the bleeding of the mascara worse

• Takes some time to dry / set than normal mascara

• If you like just color on your lashes, this is great. It’s pretty pigmented, but it will not add a ton of volume, length, or curl. Its purpose so far is more so define your lashes.

• We opted out of the bamboo wand since we had a few clean wands at home

The Cost

We think there is about 2 tubes of mascara in this tin, given that you can also scrape out ALL of it to finish. We’re being conservative given that we wear contacts, so we assume you will use 4 tubes per year.

• KeepingItNatural $19 | Yearly cost: $38

• Mark Jacobs Velvet Noir $26 | Yearly cost: $104

• E. L. F. Lengthening/Volumizing $4 | Yearly cost: $16

• Maybelline Lash Discovery $6 | Yearly cost: $24

• Physicians Formula Organic $8 | Yearly cost: $32

• Boots No 7 Stay Perfect $9 | Yearly cost: $36

• ILIA Limitless Natural Mascara $28 | Yearly cost: $112

• Dirty Hippie $28 | Yearly cost: $112

• Besame Cake Mascara $25 | Yearly cost: $50

Money Thoughts: Unless you use ELF mascara, this cost is in line with drugstore type brands. It doesn’t really break the bank.

The Good:

✔ Natural looking oomph to lashes

✔ Dark pigment in the formula

✔ Mostly natural ingredients

✔ No plastic trash!

The Bad:

✗ The mascara can bleed, this ended up all over my face

✗ There is a learning curve in using this mascara that we haven’t quite mastered yet

✗ It’s messier than the tube mascara

✗ May take a while to dry and set; this is not waterproof

✗ Will not add volume, curl or lengthen

Our Recommendation:
We loved interacting with the shop owner at KeepingItNatural, but at this point, we want to keep looking for a zero waste and natural mascara. Perhaps we haven’t quite mastered the tin yet - we will keep you posted on tricks that will shorten the time to master. At this time, this zero waste option takes too much time and creates too much of a mess to switch from standard mascaras.

We're on a mission to reduce our personal carbon footprint with small, hopefully easy, changes in our home to fight against climate change. This means we're looking for products that may be all natural, ideally zero waste, reusable or compostable -- while still being affordable!