The Mineral Guy

by Todd T-Dub
(San Francisco, CA)

I have been working with Mineral Makeup since they hit the market. I have over 40 years experience as a makeup artist and product developer. I have worked for every large mineral makeup company in one way or another. I even developed products for many. There are a lot of mineral makeup companies that miss the boat when it comes to mineral makeup. Thanks to bare escentuals for marketing bare Minerals and making mineral makeup a household word. But Bare Minerals is one of the worse mineral makeup lines on the market especially if you are an artist that works in film or photography. I dont care what your skin color is, it will look silver when either flash is used in photography or under bright lights. It does not read well at all in these situations. It is also very irritating but thats because of the Bismuth Oxychloride. BE's minerals also accentuate wrinkles and imperfections. Jane Iredale is way over priced. They took a great thing and turned it in to something that isnt true to the original. They put so many ingredients in their products its rediculous. More dermatologists are moving away from JI, beacuse of the complaints they are getting from their patients. They push how fine their minerals are. They dont say they have nanoparticles but you can see that their minerals are way too light not to have them. Colorscience is the result of the previous Bare escentuals owner not being able to market BE successfully. Once BE became popular, she tried again with Colorscience. They still use Bismuth Oxychloride which is a major irritant. Glo Minerlas is the byproduct of the

ex distributor of Jane Iredale losing the marketing rights for the line. Once they lost the company back to Jane Iredale herself, they had to create a mineral makeup to save their accounts. Unfortunately, their product stinks. Sheer cover is simply trying to be Bare Escentuals but they too have Bismuth Oxychloride. Poor range of colors (actually, most mineral lines forget about dark skinned people). Keep in mind, almost every mineral makeup line purchases their minerals (pre mixed) in China. We are finding out there are large traces of lead in almost all of them. I looked long and hard to find a company that stayed true to the mineral makeu philosophy, had a large range of colors (expecially for Asian, Black and Latin clients), didn't contain nanoparticles, didn't have bismuth oxychloride and stayed away from questionable ingredients. I found one. A little company in Baltimore MD called Monave. I was so impressed with their minerals, i trashed everything else I had and use theirs exclusively. I do a lot of Film, TV and Print work and they are all I use. This company actually buys the raw, clean minerals and blend them, themselves to make each batch of foundations, blushes, eye shadows, lip sticks, glosses and even pencils. And, they charge far less than anyone else. Their foundations are about $18.00 a jar (compaired to others that range from $28.00 to $45.00). I love that i dont have to matte down their foundations. They are dewey but not shiney. I will continue to use Mineral Makeup exclusively because of their positive benefits and I will continue to use Monave Minerals exclusively because they are the best.