The Spicy Spatula

Happy Friday, fellow vegans and you vegan-curious readers out there! I hope you’re gearing up for an awesome weekend.

Today there is no recipe because, well it’s Friday and I have something else I want to share with you. Vegan beauty products. As a dedicated vegan I am always on the look out for vegan products that don’t use animals to give me what I need. One of the hardest areas for me is black hair care products that are also vegan so I’m always grabbing new products to test out.

The drugstore DM has a lot of vegan beauty products from skin care to hair care and even makeup. Alverde is a vegan brand but even the store brand, Balea, had been adding a lot more vegan products to their lineup, which I appreciate as a frugal (ahem, cheap) shopper.

Do you have any vegan skin or hair care brands to recommend? Put them in the comments, please!

Vegan Face Mask

I love it when I find vegan face masks because I often find honey or collagen in face masks which take them out of the running for me, so I was happy to find this mask. I was even happier because it was an actual mask rather than a cream or clay mask, which I don’t mind but I’d never tried a face mask like this before.

It smelled like sunflowers–of course–and it didn’t dry out my skin. Plus it was just a couple of bucks and recyclable.

You rinse your face with warm water, dry it off and lay the mask on your face. And after sneaking up on your husband, leave it on for 10 minutes, remove and that’s it. You don’t have to wash your face until the next time you need to wash your face. Makes sense?

It was easy and much cleaner than other face masks.

Vegan Hair Care

This is really the area where I was most excited to find more vegan products. I don’t often buy drug store hair products because they are so rarely meant for Black hair. I mean I have tried some out but the shampoo, for example, just makes my hair squeaky. Maybe that’s just in my head but I have tried a bunch of products over the years and find it’s best to stick to the products meant for Black (African) hair since that extra moisture is necessary.

The problem is that so many of those products have glycerin and collagen in them for moisture. But you know something odd? When you take the animals out of the equation it turns out that you can use whatever hair products you want.

I came across these two products at DM and so far I’ve found they work pretty well and they are quite budget friendly.

The “haarfluid” is German for, wait for it…hair fluid. Strange, right? Nope, not at all. I lived in Germany for a few years and there are a lot of words like that. But, I digress. The hair fluid has avocado oil and mango butter in it which does a pretty good job of moisturizing my natural black hair. I don’t have any kind of chemical straightener in hair and therefore my hair gobbles up moisture quickly and needs to stay hydrated. It’s thicker than the “haarmilch” which is just…hair milk. I know, I know, I just taught you 3 German words.

You’re welcome.

The fluid is thicker and I like it better but the milk is easier to apply without wetting my hair. They both work surprisingly well, although I would like something a bit thicker, like a hair lotion because it lasts a bit longer.

But for regular daily use, it’s nice and I’d recommend it for all hair types.

What do you think? I know my hair is all over the place but hey, that’s my thing. I’m a bit of a wild child and that’s just how I roll, but my hair is nice and soft in this picture and my hubs ran his hand through it without any tangles, which is also a worry.

I’m still in search of a good vegan leave-in conditioner though…