Product Review: Juice Beauty Lash Defining Mascara

Finding a good natural mascara is hard; if you add vegan to the list of requirements, it's even harder.  That said, Juice Beauty's Lash Defining Mascara is only the third natural (or perhaps "mostly natural" is more accurate) mascara that I've tried, so I've far from given up hope of finding the perfect non-toxic mascara.  Since mascara performance is quite subjective, I should say what it is I look for.  My lashes are pretty long but they're thin and slightly sparse, so what I really need is a product that loads on the volume and separates my lashes, which like to grow at odd angles.  Length isn't a big factor for me since I don't need much extra, and if a mascara gives too much length, I can just gently pull the product off the tips of my lashes.

My tube of Lash Defining Mascara just reached the end of its 3-month lifespan, so it's time to report.  

When I first pulled the wand out of the tube, it came out quite clean, as you can see in the top photo.  After that first time, however – gloop city.  It had a seriously wet formula and for the first month or so, it was the gloopiest mascara I'd ever used.  When I pulled the wand out, there were big blobs on the bristles themselves, and the product also thickly coated the rest of the wand, leading to my accidentally applying a nice, even layer of mascara to my hair once.  The solution to this problem was to keep the tube standing upright, rather than storing it lying down in a drawer, as I normally would.  This kept the product at the bottom of the tube and on the bristles only, but because the tube is quite top-heavy, it had a bad habit of constantly falling over, which got pretty annoying, to be honest.  

The mascara became easier to work with (and store) when it started drying a bit, perhaps a month in.  The one downside to this was that it didn't glide on quite so smoothly.  Towards the end of the three months, it started forming itty-bitty clumps on my lashes, which made it a bit difficult to build up layers.  

Curled bare lashes

Single coat on top lashes

Built up on top, very light coat on bottom lashes

As you can tell from the pictures (taken the day I opened the tube), Juice Beauty's mascara gives decent, moderately buildable length but somewhat lacks in the volume department.  It helped straighten out some of my lashes' wonky angles, providing the better definition implied by the product's name, but it can also stick adjacent lashes to each other (those seem mutually exclusive, but apparently not).  The final look was pretty much the same throughout the three months, just a bit less smooth towards the end.  The feeling of the product on the lashes is relatively soft and smooth – not as smooth as bare lashes, of course, but not nearly as crunchy as some mascaras can leave lashes.  A major pro of this product is the complete lack of flaking (on me, at least); I had literally not a single flake, ever.  Also on the plus side: zero irritation and easy removal with water and a little gentle rubbing between thumb and finger.  

Like most mascaras, even those from the greenest brands, the Lash Defining Mascara's ingredients aren't completely pure.  Some of the ingredients don't quite meet my definition of "natural," but they do meet my standards for what I'm comfortable putting on my lashes.


The Bottom Line: Juice Beauty's Lash Defining Mascara would be best for people looking for either a natural look (easily achievable by applying only a single layer) or reasonably buildable length.  Since I'm looking for more volume than it was able to provide, it looks like I'll be leaving it behind for good.  



Ingredients:

Organic botanical extracts of serenoa repens (organic saw palmetto extract)*, aloe barbadensis (organic aloe extract)*, euphorbia cerifera (candelilla wax), triisostearyl citrate, hydrogenated glyceryl abietate, brassica campestris/aleurites fordi oil copolymer, copernicia cerifera (organic carnauba wax)*, vegetable glycerin, theobroma cacao (organic cocoa seed butter)*, persea gratissima (avocado butter), methylcellulose, xanthan gum, tocopherol (Vitamin E), sodium hyaluronate (vegetable hyaluronic acid), ethylhexylglycerin, phenethyl alcohol. May Contain: mica, iron oxide.
* = Certified organic ingredient