ALL ABOUT SMART SKIN | vegan, natural, sustainable skincare
hi everyone i hope you’re all doing well finally i am going to be talking all about my new business venture smart skin so i have been working away for the last two years two and a half years on developing smart skin which is a natural vegan sustainable skincare brand that actually works that’s the most important part about it but we’ll get on to that i’ve been so excited to finally be able to talk all about what smart skin is what the soul of smart skin is because i don’t see us as just being a skincare brand there is so much more to it i’ll show you the packaging here there we go so this is smart skin we have the four products as well as the bamboo cloths i am going to talk through each individual product um throughout this video but first of all i thought it would be really useful to actually just talk about what is smart skin what are we all about and what my inspiration was so as you know i have been fascinated in skincare for many many years i feel like i am a bit of a skincare junkie i just love trying new things i’m always discovering new brands particularly the smaller vegan natural sustainable brands i’m just absolutely fascinated in it and i do have quite problematic skin i would say i do have breakouts i have combination skin so it’s like is my skin dry today is it oily have i broken out or is it clear like it’s always up and down so i’ve really struggled to find one skincare brand that really works for me so i came up with the idea of actually creating my own skincare brand that works for my skin but also that would be perfect for any skin type so i set myself this challenge and i had this whole list of things that were important for me about creating my own skin care brand that is exactly what i would want so number one is obviously being vegan and cruelty free and i am so so proud to say that even from day one we have been certified by the vegan society so you can completely trust that all of our products will never ever be tested on animals so that was a very important aspect for me number two is that we use naturally derived ingredients i am a massive believer that our skincare can be plant-powered and work at the same time so that was a major thing for me it’s that i you know i can tick all of these things off of our books but if they don’t work it’s completely useless so i really wanted to use plant-powered naturally derived ingredients that are going to just have the most incredible skin benefits and also sustainable and eco-friendly so all of our products are produced within the uk and our ingredients have been naturally derived they are eco-friendly they have been sourced responsibly even our packaging has been fsc certified which means the cardboard has been responsibly sourced and our actual products here we used aluminium now this took a bit of time i don’t know if this is going to be interesting for you but i find it fascinating took us a bit of time discovering which material would be most sustainable and i kind of toyed with the idea of using recycled plastic that could be then continue to be recycled um i found like all these innovative materials that have been made from recycled materials like it it’s like a rabbit hole that we went down trying to figure out what material to use but we kept coming back to aluminium when i say we by the way i mean the incredible team that makes up smart skin it’s like 99 women incredible people that are so passionate and motivated and dedicated to everything that is smart skin we’ll come to that in a minute um but we ended up going with aluminium because i just kept seeing how sustainable aluminium is is one of the most easily recyclable materials on the planet making it one of the most sustainable materials on the planet so that’s what we ended up going for and it actually makes it very practical being in these tubes i just love the way that they sit on the shelf and actually using them i find really enjoyable being in this kind of packaging so that’s what we ended up going for all of the ingredients that we use in the products are at least 95 naturally derived for all of them which i’m so proud of and we have been cosmos approved natural by the soil association which i am just so so proud of because that’s not easy to do by the way it’s a vigorous process and i just knew that we had to have that from the get-go from day one um i feel like we have started running before we can walk is that the same running before we can walk jump before you walk walk run before you i don’t know but we’ve done it i’m just so proud that cosmos have approved us as natural so in terms of like who is smart skin what is the soul of smart skin i have been incredibly inspired by my audience by my followers for years and years and hearing your stories over the years has just given me the biggest motivation to just get out there and do it i hear so many stories on a daily basis that are sent to me by women that have just made it happen whether that’s to do with their own businesses or any aspect of their life like a goal that they have achieved whether that’s fitness goals or challenges any kind of goal that they have reached whether it’s like climbing a mountain even i’m just like yes i just have the most amazing network of inspiring women that have motivated me to do my own thing as well so creating smart skin is that thing that i have made happen that goal and it’s all because of you guys that have been there every step of the way for the last few years and so it only felt natural that because i have been inspired by you to create smart skin that i involved you every step of the way so a few months ago i put out a little message on my instagram asking you all to submit your inspiring stories i mean not even that i think many people think their own stories are inspiring but i was like just let me know your stories that you feel you are proud of something that you have achieved goals that you have reached and you’ve just made it happen and the stories that were submitted were amazing just hundreds and hundreds of incredible stories it was actually really tough to narrow it down and in the end i selected seven women where every story was so different from the other but equally as inspiring and magical in its own way and then these women we invited to take part in the debut campaign it was such an incredible day if you go onto our instagram which is at my smart skin you will see these women so our models our muses are my followers and that just felt i can’t even describe it like on the day having these women turn up who are just beautiful inside and out they just completely resonated with me and what smart skin is all about it’s about feeling empowered as a woman it was amazing to see these women together in one room so please go and check out their stories look on our website mysmartskin.
co.uk and read about them for example we have bella who is such a bright woman she is training to be a doctor and on the side is volunteering with autistic children because she feels strongly that she needs to give these autistic people a voice because she feels like they don’t have a voice right now so she is volunteering on the side of training to be a doctor with these autistic children and i’m just blown away by her story but we also have francisca who is an advocate for black geographers and she’s created her own organization again to provide a voice please just read into her story it’s just blown me away every single woman has an inspiring story to tell so i’d really encourage you to read up on them and that’s what smart skin is all about it’s about empowerment as a woman let’s talk about the products now so first of all we have the golden jelly now i feel like already this is people’s favorite and i’ll be honest i couldn’t live without this product like all of them are my babies but if i had to pick one that i couldn’t live without it’s definitely the golden jelly i use this every single morning and every single evening this is a jelly to oil cleanser and the consistency is just beautiful so it is like a jelly consistency when you use it and it has that beautiful golden color that comes from the sea buckthorn which is also really high in antioxidants so when you smooth this all over your face it is like an oil and it removes all the dirt from the day if you’re using it in the evening or all of those impurities in the morning from your night in bed for hours on end and it also removes all makeup including eye makeup waterproof makeup and that’s from the oils in there so we have the avocado oil in here which is moisturizing the almond oil which is cleansing and then the grapeseed oil which is hydrating as well so all of these in there they’re not going to dry the skin out so that’s one thing with a cleanser i think i find personally a lot of cleansers yes they get rid of all the dirt and make sure that your skin is completely cleansed but they can leave your skin feeling really dry afterwards so every ingredient in here has a purpose to remove any impurities so it purifies your skin but also locks in moisture afterwards so you won’t have that horrible like dry tight feeling after using it but it also isn’t greasy so it kind of has this beautiful balance of not drying your skin out but also not leaving it feeling really oily afterwards and it will remove all of that makeup at the same time one ingredient that i have been fascinated with the golden jelly is squalane now squalane really balances the natural oil production of your skin making it really great if you have problematic skin like me so if you have any acne or you have breakouts squalene is amazing because it’s also anti-inflammatory so it’ll really calm down the skin and just draw out those impurities so squalene is also olive derived it used to i mean look into squirreling like where it used to come from not nice but of course because we are vegan we have been approved by vegan society we do not have any animal derived ingredients at all of course so squalane now is olive derived which is amazing and it has the most incredible skin benefits so once you’ve massaged this all over the skin you’ve removed all of that makeup if you’re like me with mascara or any kind of eye makeup you end up with kind of like panda eyes after using this just all of that oil just melts everything away and then when you mix it with warm water and using our bamboo cloths it turns into this milky consistency so it’s quite fun to use it goes from an oil to a milky consistency get rid of all of that makeup and then you’re just left with beautiful cleansed bright skin i might as well talk about the bamboo cloths while we’re talking about it anyway so these are our bamboo cloths they are the softest thing ever i used to always use a muslin cloth and of course it’s really important to use some kind of reusable towel or muslin cloth or bamboo cloth just so you’re not throwing away wipes and everything so these cloths are actually way more gentle than muslin paths i had no idea before but muslim clothes can be quite damaging to the skin because they are quite rough right but these are super super gentle and they’re actually even great to use on baby skin that’s how sensitive they are just super super soft and sustainable because they come from the bamboo next we have the miracle metamask now this is a cell regenerative mask so you’re really going to be left with like new skin i always say it’s like having new skin after you use this so i use this twice a week for 20 minutes because we have glycolic acid in here which is the cell regenerative ingredient i would say if you’re new to using glycolic acid or ahas start off testing it on your skin just to make sure you’re okay with it and then slowly you can build up to using it for five minutes on the skin at first this is only if you’re very new to using glycolic acid or ahas and then eventually you can build up to the full 20 minutes twice a week and wow will you notice a difference basically how it works is it removes those dead skin cells the dead skin on the very surface of your skin so it does just remove any kind of congestion deep from within the skin and it just leaves you with this beautiful bright glowing glowing skin and when you smooth this over the skin you’ll get an instant warming sensation and it’s amazing i don’t know if you’re like me but i love it when you can feel a product actually working on the skin it’s active it’s doing something and it’s just this beautiful warming sensation which is gorgeous for this time of year like during autumn and winter it’s just this oh i love the sensation and that’s from glycerin glycerin is from vegetables so it’s not animal derived again and what it does is it draws out the moisture from the air and that’s what the warming sensation is so it’s actually like actively working it’s drawing moisture into the skin and then the glycolic acid is removing the dead skin cells we also have camellia in here which is a beautiful ingredient this is actually what helps uh regenerate the new skin cells but it also offers protection into the skin so i think it’s very important when you are removing dead skin cells that you’re also providing an element of protection so you’re not damaging the skin and i should also say that the miracle metamask is very sensitive so even though we do have the glycolic acid in there it’s very small amounts so i do recommend starting off the five minutes and building up to 20 minutes but it is a very beautifully gentle sensitive product and that’s mainly from the olive there so it’s not going to strip the skin away again none of these products are going to leave your skin feeling really dry because i do feel like when you go for these kind of high antioxidant and stripping products it can just expose your skin and then you feel like you’re you’re tight and you just get these dry areas that won’t happen with this because we do have the olive and camellia in there which are both super sensitive and gentle and they’ll offer that element of protection and i will say make sure you are using an spf we should be using sbfs on top of our moisturizers anyway all year round even if it’s a gray gloomy day i think especially as you start getting older not that i’m old but i am in my late 20s now i’ve realized the importance of just using an spf to protect you from the sun that can really damage your skin as we all know but especially after using any kind of ahas and again once you’ve left it on for five to twenty minutes you can rinse the bamboo cloths under the warm water and just gently remove that product and your skin will feel absolutely incredible i’m now going to go on to the multi-v elixir here here’s the box so this is the maltv elixir now i would probably it would make sense to talk about the moisturizer but as i’ve just spoken about the mask i’m going to tell you about this the multi-v because this is amazing to use in conjunction with the mask so what the mask is doing as we’ve said is cell regeneratives it’s going to get rid of any of those dead skin cells on the surface of the skin that’s really hard to say the surface of the skin and then what we want to do is add that layer of protection now we do have that from the camellia but what the multi-v elixir is going to do is just inject like this incredible protective layer and hydration back into the skin so it makes sense once you have removed any dead skin cells we want to add that element of protection and hydration now we have so many different oils in this elixir but what’s magical about this and why we’ve called it just this elixir is that it’s not going to leave your skin feeling really like greasy and oily i used to be very scared of oils and to be honest a lot of oils do not agree with my skin i just end up it just like clogs up my pores basically like you can imagine it makes sense like if you’ve got oily congestion going on do you really want to slather on like a thick layer of oil probably not but this oil is different because all of the oils in here they are non-greasy so it’s not going to clog up all of those pores because it’s incredibly light and non-greasy non-oily even though we have all of these beautiful oils that are so high in antioxidants one of my favorite oils in here is the rose hip now rose hip traditionally was used for wound healing so if it’s capable of healing wounds on your body imagine what it can do on your skin so if you do have any breakouts that are kind of causing a bit of inflammation on the skin any redness the rosehip is really going to help to calm that down and heal it’s very very healing and most of the ingredients in here are actually super high in antioxidants so they’re really going to help just with that healing process and the turmeric oil and blueberry oil that we have in here are so high in antioxidants we know the benefits of turmeric and blueberry when we eat them and digest them in our bodies so you can only imagine how great they are on the skin as well so they are high in antioxidants they’re again going to help the healing process especially after using the mask twice a week and then again the avocado oil which is so hydrating so it’s going to inject that hydration into the skin naturally without leaving this like slippery like layery mess going on on the surface of the skin they really kind of penetrate deep into the skin rather than just sitting like i don’t know like a layer just on the skin we don’t want that and in case you are interested i’m wondering this is non-comediogenic so it doesn’t clog pores if that’s something that you’re concerned about with oils because i know a lot of oils can can do that they can create blackheads and just like create more problems than not using it so yeah this is non-comediogenic so in terms of when to use this i use this every single evening just on its own i just think it’s such a beautiful product especially as we’ve said after using the mask but also something that is really interesting and how you can use this is using it on top of the moisturizer now we’re coming to the moisturizer next and this is something that i think not many people would think to do and i only discovered this about how the multiv elixir works in conjunction with these other products from the labs now this just using a very small amount dabbing it on top of the moisturizer after the more you’ve let the moisturizer sink in adds an extra barrier to the skin protection especially good if you live in a city but also right now with the seasons changing and it’s autumn winter we’ve got central heating on inside it’s cold outside you can start getting very dry skin especially around here so using this on top of the moisturizer just adds an extra layer of moisture and hydration so that leads us on nicely to the super c moisturizer another absolute favorite i mean i’m saying that all my favorites but that’s why we only have four products because i only wanted to create these products and put them out into the world unless i was absolutely satisfied and in love with them and i can positively say that i’m obsessed with every single one and they do work so well in conjunction with each other so like i said the multi-v elixir works so so well on top of the moisturizer and something that is very interesting about this moisturizer is the reason we’ve called it super c is because we have this fascinating ingredient called super superoxy now i’ve never heard of superoxy in my life i’ve never seen it in any other products but when i was down in the labs like two years ago like initially talking about ingredients to use they brought up super oxy now superoxy comes from the kakadu plum which is 10 times more powerful than vitamin c completely blew my mind when i researched into this ingredient so that’s why it’s called the super c moisturizer now vitamin c has the most incredible brightening properties so we’ve we’ve got the cell regeneration right from the mask and we’ve got the cleansing purifying properties from the cleanser and the hydration from the multiv elixir now with the moisturizer i needed something that’s going to be brightening and just create that natural glow and that comes from the kakadu plum with the vitamin c the superoxy also naturally boosts collagen which we know is so so great for the skin especially as you start getting older it’s quite important to make sure that your collagen production is still high and we also have moruvio extract in here now this is a natural defensive ingredient so it is anti-pollutant which is obviously brilliant because unfortunately our cities are incredibly polluted from all kinds of things like cars and planes and just the environment and the atmosphere not being as clean as we would probably like it to be and that can have a massive negative impact on the skin cause all kind of problems premature aging and congestion so the myrubio extract in here just creates this beautiful kind of anti-pollutant barrier to the skin which is super super important and i just absolutely love using these two products in conjunction especially if your skin is feeling particularly dry just adding that that layer of the multi-v elixir on top creates this gorgeous barrier and of course i think the thing that we most want from a moisturizer right is moisture we want hydration so i’ve used prickly pear in here i don’t know if you’ve heard about prickly pear it is actually quite popular ingredient now because of the incredible skin properties the benefits that it provides now obviously when you think about it prickly pear it comes from the desert it’s basically like a cactus and it just draws in moisture because if you think about in a desert it’s super dry not a lot of access to water so the cactus is like the best thing at just like sucking in all the moisture and that’s exactly what the prickly pear does when it’s on your skin it’s just like sucks in this moisture it makes sure your skin is super hydrated moisturized and creates that gorgeous natural glow so we’ve got the super oxy the prickly bear prickly pear we don’t have any prickly bears going on around here no no absolute opposite we’ve got the prickly pear and also the marubio extract so all of that together it creates the most gorgeous hydrated glowing skin so they are the four products that i couldn’t be happier with and of course we’ve got i say i always say we’ve got four products but i guess we’ve got technically five products including the bamboo cloths so i hope you enjoy listening to that video it’s quite a long one i wanted to really take my time with this because i have created an ig tv on my instagram which is more condensed um but for youtube i feel like i could can go into a bit more detail in depth with the products because there’s so much to them like there’s so many benefits uh that each one provides and that was something that was also very important to me that every single ingredient in here serves a purpose you won’t see any ingredient on the back of the packaging here that doesn’t serve a very important purpose so that’s something that i’ve gone through with the labs like right why are we using this like why is this hair it needs to have a reason it needs to have a skin benefit and a purpose for the product so that’s why i need to just sit down and like really go into depth with those products so i hope you found it interesting and i’ve been absolutely loving seeing on instagram people tagging me in their photos and sending me stories of them unboxing the products and how they’re using the products like it’s just absolutely i mean it’s magical it’s surreal it’s really surreal i think when you’ve been working on a project for over two years and you are so invested in it personally and you’re i mean i’m completely obsessed with them it’s changed my skin completely it’s so lovely to then see it out there in the world it makes it all feel a bit real because i have been working on it very quietly and silently behind the scenes um so then to have it suddenly out there is it’s quite scary to be honest the day the night before we launched i was really nervous i was like i love these products i’m so invested in these products but like what are other people going to think so having the positive feedback come in is just amazing i i honestly couldn’t be happier i’m so so excited it’s such an incredible time for me right now i think as you all know i’ve been through a really really tough time i think everyone has this year like 2020 has just been an absolute roller coaster for everyone so i’m not gonna sit here and say oh it’s been really tough for me because i know it’s affected everyone in so many different ways but yeah the last few weeks have just been like wow like what else is gonna happen guys um so to have this one thing like this this baby that i can talk about and feel so excited about and happy has just been my saving grace release i feel like the timing of smart skin is no coincidence like september 2020 was always our launch like from day one we were like september 2020 that’s when we’re gonna go um so i just feel like it’s no coincidence that it’s kind of happened now the way that everything has unraveled and played out this year personally for me like i’ve suffered a massive massive loss but i’ve gained something absolutely incredible from launching smart skin it’s just it’s really beautiful the way life works it all works out in the end right somehow you never think it does or will but it does um so that’s the story of smart skin that’s what we’re all about uh they’re our products i hope you love them i can’t wait to hear more of your feedback and i’ll see you guys very soon lots of love
