In August last year I made the decision to switch my blog and YouTube channel over to cruelty free beauty. In all honesty this was long overdue – I have been vegetarian for most of my life and I switched to vegan almost a year ago, so why wasn’t my choice to live a more compassionate lifestyle reflecting in my makeup bag too" I rifled through my heaving Ikea Alex unit and pulled out everything that had been tested on animals. As the products littered my rug (about a third of my collection) I glanced over at my dog Maddie who was watching me intently and felt sick with guilt that it had taken me this long. Any lingering doubts quickly left my mind, and whilst the dog was probably just hoping for a treat or wondering why I was looking wistfully at a Bobbi Brown palette, to me it felt like a sign I was doing the right thing. Had I been a regular makeup consumer I wouldn’t have been so hasty in ruthlessly getting rid of my cosmetics, I would have used them up and just not repurchased them, after all the money was already spent and the damage already done. I’m not however a ‘normal’ makeup lover, I blog about it and I have so much that even after filling four big boxes of animal tested items my drawers were still bucking under the weight of lipsticks. I’m still using up foundations and items that couldn’t be sanitised, but they won’t be going on my blog or my channel unless it’s in the form of an “Empties...