Get the lavera Look

As we head towards the end of the year, AW12 catwalk trends indicate that the must-have look is all about top knots, berry red lips, heavy lids and bold brows. lavera has just the right products to achieve all 4 of these trends, all completely natural and organic and not a synthetic ingredient in sight!

Top knots work best on hair that hasn’t been freshly washed (a day after shampooing is ideal). First off, put your hair in a high pony tail, then wrap the hair into a top knot, and secure in place with hair grips. You can go for a sleek and tidy finish, but a slightly dishevelled look works just as well. Use lavera’s Volume and Shine Organic Hairspray to hold the style firmly in place.

Liquid eyeliner is key to achieving the heavy lid look. Don’t hold back – apply a thick sweeping line of black liquid eyeliner across the upper lash line, tapering at the end for an elegant finish. Keep the rest of the lid light and natural with Beautiful Mineral Eyeshadow in Golden Beige if you are wearing this with the berry lips; but finish with lashings of mascara, try lavera’s Intense Volumising Mascara for extra impact.

Eyebrows are bold and heavy this season (think Brooke Shields in her younger days), so it’s time to pay some attention to them. Even though the thicker brow is in, they still need to be neat and tidy, so use lavera’s Style & Care Gel to achieve this look, it’s perfect. It provides a nice finish to your brows, defining your look, but the bonus is that it nourishes them as well. The Style & Care Gel contains organic liquorice root and organic sea buckthorn to give a natural shine, providing a gorgeous finish.

For berry red lips, lavera’s Trend make-up has two great ones to choose from, the classic Beautiful Lips in Deep Red (number 04) or Red Berry Charm (number 05) for a more cranberry-red finish. The red lip look works on both blondes and brunettes, so go for it - find your shade and be brave!

It’s great (and perhaps unexpected) that there  is an innovative young team who work on product development at lavera, which means there is always natural and organic make-up available to keep your look bang on trend and up-to-date, and chemical-free!

www.lavera.co.uk

OK Magazine's Emma G talks lavera in the spring

                              

OK Magazine's Emma Gunavardhana talks lavera in the spring

Spring is a time for indulging, so you won’t feel guilty about pampering your skin and ensuring it’s ready for the spring/summer months by indulging in lavera’s Body Spa Organic Honey Moments Body Lotion, £8.45. Full of organic lovelies this nourishes and cares for the skin while relaxing the senses.

Ignite spring into your beauty routine with some rose-infused treats from the Organic Wild Rose collection. Nothing feels as refreshing as the soothing Rose Garden Creamy Body Wash,   £7.45. The luxurious formulation leaves the skin feeling perfectly cleansed and wonderfully soft. The Body Spa Organic Rose Garden Body Oil, £7.95 is an ideal post-shower or bath treat. With its mix of fresh rose and the softening oil texture it is the ultimate product for the body this season.  Make the most out of this body beautifying treat by using it after an indulgent bath when skin is 80 per cent dry for a real moisture boost.

For an extra special treat the Revitalising Face Mask, £2.90, is a 15 minute mask that’ll infuse skin with rose flower water and organic macadamia leaving skin looking brighter, fresher and feeling smoother. For rose-tinted treats spoil yourself over the holidays with the 24-Hour Moisturising Cream, £14.90 and Nourishing Eye Gel, £15.90, giving skin that fresh moisture it needs and eradicating tightness in the skin.

Say goodbye to the pasty winter months and treat yourself to some of lavera’s spring/summer make up bag essentials. Skin this season is all about barely there coverage and for a flawless finish that’ll suit the current catwalk looks and let your natural beauty shine through Natural Liquid Foundation, £11.90, is just the ticket. Infused with Argan oil and blossom butter it’s a gorgeously fresh colour with skin nourishing goodness too making it feel as beautiful as it looks.

Sheer colour on lips is in vogue as of now but rather than lip glosses the look is lighter, fresher and prettier. Beautiful Lips in Berry Violet, £10.90 mixed in with a lip balm is the prettiest way to pout.

A fresh blush on cheeks is the quickest and easiest way to ‘pretty’ yourself up as it screams ‘health’. So Fresh Mineral Powder in Shimmering Rose Light, £11.90, looks unbelievably fresh and glowing when applied softly to the apples of your cheeks. Just load up your blusher brush, smile in the mirror and swirl on the fullest part of your cheeks. Et voila!

Written by Emma Gunavardhana, Beauty Director of OK! Magazine

And the winner is...

Think sky scraper heels parading up red carpets, champagne clutched in perfectly manicured hands and platters of pretentious sized hors d'oeuvres that wouldn’t even fill up Kate Moss. Yes that’s right! – It is Beauty Awards Season and from the most recent short listing announcement, it looks like us lot at lavera are going to have to go shopping for a new dress! (Any excuse!)

Ahead of celebrating its 25^th Silver Anniversary next year, lavera has got plenty cause to celebrate after being shortlisted for more awards than Stephen Spielberg!

Pure Beauty is the UK's most popular and successful beauty retail trade magazine. It delivers widespread breaking news on the hottest trends & latest products to people across the industry. (In other words, you could think of it as “The Lady Ga Ga” of all Beauty Magazines.) So we were delighted to discover that we were nominated for no less than six awards from a magazine of such magnitude!

The spotlight is on our Basis Sensitiv Q10 Moisturising Cream, Trend Sensitiv Make-Up collection, the All Round Cream, our Basis Sensitiv Foot Cream as well as our Q10 hand cream and last but not least, our old reliable Trend Sensitiv Tinted Moisturising Cream.

Our impatience in finding out if we are winners increases each day in the run up to next Thursday’s Gala Dinner when the announcements will be made. To be nominated alongside the big boys of beauty such as Dove, Nivea and Elizabeth Arden is adding pressure to our already heightened anticipation! Help lavera, meaning “the truth” in Latin become the truthful winner of the Pure Beauty Awards by voting here: http://purebeauty.co.uk/awards/pure-beauty-awards-have-your-say. Follow us on twitter @laverauk or facebook,  http://www.facebook.com/ laveranaturalskincare to find out if we are winners next week!

Argan Oil: Natural Beauty at its best

Unfortunately, ageing is an inevitable natural process that affects us all. Mother Nature may have created this unavoidable and unfavourable progression, however being the darling that she is; she has also provided us women with a wonderful natural solution. Make way for Argan oil!

This awe-inspiring oil has created more excitement and anticipation in the beauty world lately than when Marilyn Monroe pioneered her classic red lip look in the 50’s!

Beauty Bloggers, Magazines and other Queens of the Cosmetic Kingdom have recently caught on to this natural anti-ageing agent and us lavera lot are pleased to report that our magic make-up also boasts this “it” oil. Our make-up range appropriately named “Trend,” enhances your natural beauty in allowing you to create up-to-date looks using our chic product range. The fact that it also naturally assists with anti-ageing by including argan oil as a natural ingredient is another reason for us to be proud of our product!

Sourced in Morocco, the oil is produced by pressing argan tree kernels and is packed full of vitamin E and carotenes along with 80% unsaturated fatty acids. – No wonder it’s a wonder!

So next time you apply your lavera mineral sun glow powder, remember the glowing ingredient you have to thank, growing in Morocco and in popularity!   

"Walk the Walk" and do a deodorant swap!

The Friday feeling is mounting quicker in the office than the excitement we get when we have a new lavera product to try out. This weekend is an extra special one on the calendar for us lavera lot.
This Saturday (11th June), the charity that we are honoured and proud to sponsor, “Walk the Walk,” have a Moonwalk scheduled in Edinburgh. It will see over 10,000 wonderful women setting off from Inverlieth Park and completing either a full 26 mile or 13 mile half marathon route in and around the city. Some of whom will do so boldly brandishing their bras', along with (if past walks that we’ve been involved with are anything to go by) a big smile and an inspiring sense of camaraderie prompted by the brilliant cause.
We are honoured to be able to sponsor the charity which has raised in excess of £64 million for vital breast cancer causes across the UK. Founder of ‘Walk the Walk’ and breast cancer sufferer Nina Barough, has been dedicated to actively encouraging women, men and children to become more aware of their own potential for healing and prevention through maintaining health and wellbeing. This is a sentiment lavera hugely admires and it is reflected through our brand.
At Saturday’s event we will be diligently devoted to providing 100% natural deodorants to any aspiring organic cosmetic users and any perspiring walkers! We think the fact that conventional deodorants contain chemicals that can irritate the skin and are less environmentally friendly than natural deodorants, quite frankly, stinks! There have been recent reports to suggest that parabens that can be found in non-natural deodorants may be linked to an increased risk of the development of cancer. With this in mind, the Walk the Walk cancer charity is an important opportunity for us to promote the benefits of our 100% natural deodorants. Our “deodorant amnesty” has the scent of success in offering walkers the chance to swap their non-natural deodorants for one of our organic deodorants at half price to contribute to promoting health and wellbeing, in line with the ethos of the entire event which we so admire.

http://bit.ly/izJbhV

Sun protection - Can natural protect me enough?

The sun is out and we should all be outside enjoying the great weather! But here is the important part, if you're out in the sun it's essential that you apply sun cream with a good SPF to ensure you stay protected.

Part of our range at lavera is to provide 100% natural and organic sun protection. It's the range we're most well known for around the world because of it's effectiveness and gentle formulations for skin sensitivity.

Our sun care can be used by babies, children and adults and is fully certified by NaTrue. Our maximum is an SPF 20 which is a good factor to keep yourself protected in the sun.

"SURELY AN SPF 20 WON'T PROTECT ME, I USUALLY WEAR AN SPF 50 IF THE SUN IS REALLY HOT"

These are comments we come across quite often, but here is a fact:

An SPF 20 will protect you from atleast 95% of the suns UV rays. An SPF 40/50 will only provide minimal more protection of about 2%. Although it may seem an SPF 40 should provide double the amount of protection, this is not the case. So ALWAYS ensure you get an SPF 15 or higher to ensure you have enough protection.

DID YOU KNOW: That a conventional sun cream is only effective 20 minutes after application? Now you do. lavera sun creams/sprays are specially formulated to lay on the surface of the skin (like an elephant throws sand over itself to stay protected from the sun) so they are effective immediately after application.

Make sure you stay safe this summer, remember to try and keep fully protected with sun cream and/or protective clothing i.e. sun hate during the hottest hours of 11am - 3pm.

For more information on our sun products visit http://www.lavera.co.uk/

What should you look for when choosing genuine natural skin care

We recently commissioned some market research to find out what people look for when they choose natural skin care. One discovery (that shocked us here at HO) was that people DON'T look for certifications to verify the authenticity if the natural and organic claim, and instead just look for the word "natural" somewhere on the packaging.

If you see the word ‘natural’ on a skin care or beauty product, you would assume that the ingredients in there are natural...WRONG! Many of us in the natural beauty industry know how misleading this can be. Did you know that a skin care product can have the words ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ on the packaging even if only 1% of the ingredients it contains are natural and organic? This means that 99% of the ingredients are not natural at all, and the product is mainly made up of synthetic ‘nasties’! It's a sneaky tactic, and people genuinely wanting to turn to natural due to skin conditions and lifestyle changes should beware.



TRESemme NATURALS markets itself as "natural" and contains "lower sulphates"

which means it still includes chemicals

So here is a quick guide that shows you what certifications to look for when choosing your natural products. The main genuine certifications are: NaTrue, BDIH, EcoCert and Soil Association.

NaTrue, BDIH and Ecocert are international certifications used around the world, they not only verify that the item is natural and organic, but also that the product (and the ingredients it contains) is not tested on animals. Soil Association is a UK based certification. These are the logo’s to look out for:

All of these certifications guarantee that your chosen skin care or beauty product will only contain natural and organic ingredients and NO harmful chemicals.

Certifications will always be printed on the product if they are genuine