Introduction

Welcome to my site, my name is Kimberly, but everyone calls me Kimmie. Even at work. When I was thinking of a name for this site, my sister proudly announced eyeflourish. When I looked at her like she was crazy, she pointed out that to flourish is to be successful, and it is a blog about eyeshadow (the pun was not lost on me). The more I thought about it, the more it grew on me, but I added the “nickel allergy” part because that is what it is all about. If you are here chances are you have a nickel allergy, or maybe think you have one. Or maybe you just love eyeshadow. You know that feeling you get when you open a new pallet? If you answered yes, welcome to my world. If you answered no, maybe you are just looking for something you can wear now that 99% of makeup is off limits. Or is it? Maybe and maybe not. All I can do is tell you my story, and through lots of trial and error, what I can and cannot use.

My Story

I was never someone that was into makeup. In 2016 my whole collection fit in a cosmetic bag. I had two drugstore palettes, one mauve and one neutral, some kind of concealer, and two lipsticks, one mauve and one…you guessed it…neutral. The last thing I had was my eyeliner. This was the one product I would wear everyday. I always felt that when your eyes popped, you needed very little other makeup. Then in 2017 my world changed when I discovered eyelashes. If eyeliner makes your eyes pop, eyelashes take them from a 1 to 100. I started getting eyelash extensions, which is basically when they glue a lash, or a few lashes to you one of your lashes. Everything was right with the world until December of 2018. This time when I got a new set of eyelashes, I could feel an irritation. When I got home I noticed that I had some swelling. It went away pretty fast, but it stuck in the back of my mind. A few weeks later when I went back for my fill, I was happy that there was no irritation. However, when I woke up the next morning my eyes were swollen and I was even more irritated than I had been the last time. In complete denial, I went to work where I was repeatedly asked if I had been punched in the face. Within a few hours it was clear I had to not only go home, but first get these lashes taken off. By the time I got home my eyes were painfully swollen shut. I had never had any kind of reaction like this before, but I was somehow convinced it was the eyeshadow glue. So you can imagine my disappointment when I tried to use my precious eyeliner again, and got a similar reaction. It wasn’t as bad, but it was there. Now instead of asking if I was beat up, people just asked me why I was always crying. (My eyes were red, swollen and watery, and worse…..they hurt. A lot). The time had come for me to see a doctor.

The dermatologist took one look at me and informed me I needed a patch test. This is basically where they take a patch and put it on your back. The patch contains concentrations of common allergens, so If you are allergic to something on the patch you will know it. You will feel it. Trust me. You keep this on for about three days. When they removed the patch, the doctor informed me that I was allergic to nickel. I was shocked. That was something I had never thought of. “Is there nickel in glue?” I asked. He answered that there was not. He said I needed to be careful with jewelry and zippers…..stuff like that. This made no sense to me as I was sure the allergy had something to do with eye makeup. When I told him, he suggested there could be nickel in fake eyelashes. Maybe, but I was not convinced. He gave me a piece of paper that informed me what I should avoid, and I left.

The paper mostly talked about foods and metals. For the purpose of this blog, I am only talking about makeup, and more specifically, eye makeup, but I will put links to other sites on my “Recommended Sites” page. After a little research, I realized that there is some nickel in almost everything. But, I still couldn’t figure out the makeup part. Isn’t all make up nickel free? Sort of. Not exactly. When I examined the paper again I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. A bullet. In the corner. It said “avoid pigments.” That was interesting. What pigments? Pigments in makeup? YES. I had my answer. So, what gives makeup pigment? Blushes and highlighters and eyeshadows? It’s something called iron oxides and it’s in 99% of the make up in the world. Oh yeah, and its a derivative of nickel.