Interview with Heavenly Naturals Founder Rene’ Wright

Rene, Founder and CEO of Heavenly Naturals

We have searched wide and far for new prod­ucts, and this time, we sat down with Ms Wright, founder and CEO of Heavenly Naturals. Her prod­ucts are sold through etsy.com and its online store (dis­count code at end of article).

C: Carrie R: Rene

C: What did you work on before start­ing Heavenly Naturals and what prompted you to start it?

R: I worked as a free­lance makeup artist, and was also a per­sonal assistant.

Working as a makeup artist, you are always work­ing on dif­fer­ent types of skin, each has its own needs. I wanted a prod­uct that was extremely ver­sa­tile, that could be used many dif­fer­ent ways with no wor­ries about aller­gies. Minerals can be used as eye­shadow, blush, lip color, body paint even. The last thing you want to do is use some­thing on some­one only to find out they have a reac­tion to an ingre­di­ent. I myself had super sen­si­tive skin that would freak out if I applied cer­tain prod­ucts and it was quite frustrating.

So I began to research nat­ural min­eral makeup and fell in love, The only prob­lem I had was that most min­eral makeup comes in the most bor­ing array of grey, light brown, wierd blue and unflat­ter­ing plums I had ever seen. I wanted bold, vibrant, fun col­ors for the younger makeup con­nois­seur and that is how it all began.

C: When did Heavenly Naturals start?

R: The thoughts, ideas and inspi­ra­tion all began in about 2006 this is when I started for­mu­lat­ing and play­ing around with pack­ag­ing ideas.

C: Is there any par­tic­u­lar per­son or inci­dent that has con­tributed to your success?

R: Heavenly Naturals was defi­nately a God inspired com­pany. I was liv­ing in California, mak­ing good money and enjoy­ing life, and I got a call that my Grandmother had a stroke and was par­a­lyzed. She lived in New Mexico in a tiny town in the moun­tains very rural. God spoke very clearly to my heart and I knew I had to do some­thing so I moved my fam­ily to New Mexico. My Grandmother needed care 24 hours a day, so I could not leave the house. During the times she was rest­ing I would work on the busi­ness. If I had not moved to NM I would have never had the time to make the dream of Heavenly Naturals a real­ity, because I was always work­ing. So in essence it was a God thing.

Pink Cupcake Whipped Soap and Shaving Cream

C: How is Heavenly Naturals dif­fer­ent from other lines of min­eral makeup and skincare?

R: We have a full line of cos­met­ics includ­ing, foun­da­tion, blush, con­ceal­ers, hydra­tion mists, lotions, per­fumes, lip but­ters, you name it. We have almost 150 eye­shadow col­ors and lots more to come. We are spe­cial­iz­ing in cus­tom col­ors you can’t find in any other shop. Every shop needs the basics, we have those, black, white, the col­ors you would find in a box of crayons, but all the col­ors we add to the shop are all cus­tom cre­ated col­ors that you will not find in other min­eral makeup shops.

Many com­pa­nies only carry eye­col­ors. Unfortunately in the makeup world there are a ton of new com­pa­nies who are basi­cally repack­ag­ing col­ors that they have bought in bulk and that is all they sell. I don’t see the cre­ativ­ity in that at all.

C: Are you good at color makeup? Do you work with dif­fer­ent youtube gurus and makeup artists for inspirations?

R: I love color, I love try­ing new com­bi­na­tions of col­ors and I get inspired by every­thing I see. I have a YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/heavenlynaturals 

Rene in one of her tutorials

Heavenly Naturals just started a spon­sor­ship pro­gram to enlist tal­ented makeup guru’s to show off what you can do with these awe­some min­er­als, they all have good solid fol­low­ings so I think that will defi­nately help get­ting the word out.

C: What is your phi­los­o­phy or thoughts on makeup?

R: Makeup should be used to enhance one’s inner beauty. Beauty should not become pos­si­ble at the expense of another, I don’t believe in ani­mal test­ing. And the more nat­ural the better!

C: What knowl­edge, skills or expe­ri­ence do you think is the impor­tant in start­ing one’s own line of makeup and skin­care products?

R: The most impor­tant thing should be a knowl­edge of skin, It helps a ton if you know the needs of the dif­fer­ent types of skin. When for­mu­lat­ing you will need to know which ingre­di­ents will help and which will harm. I think the next most impor­tant thing is a cre­ative spirit, you have to love what you do and if you love it things will be easy. Starting your own line takes A LOT of WORK and a lot of time and energy, and if you don’t love it then it won’t be fun, and that will show in your product.

C: What are some of the new prod­ucts for next year (2010)?

R: Right now we are work­ing on a full line of highly pig­mented lip glosses. And we are expand­ing our col­lec­tion of matte col­ors. We try to add new col­lec­tions with the sea­sons and ran­domly when inspired to do so. I cre­ate new col­ors prac­ti­cally each day, and then they go into my trea­sure chest of pos­si­bil­i­ties and then when I am ready to start a new col­lec­tion I find my inspi­ra­tion and then go through the color to find the ones that most closely reflect that idea.

Finally, Rene added that “… if you haven’t tried min­er­als you are defi­nately miss­ing out. You can do so much more with a min­eral pig­ment than you could with a reg­u­lar pressed shadow. … And when it comes to foun­da­tion there is a min­eral foun­da­tion for every per­son, you just have to find the right one for you. A lot of peo­ple have been turned off by min­er­als because they tried one from one of the big name min­eral com­pa­nies only to find that the makeup made their face itch, or that it set­tled into all of the fine lines and wrin­kles and made them look much older. I have tried most of the big names out there and expe­ri­enced this for myself from these over­priced prod­ucts, so when for­mu­lat­ing our min­er­als I adding the qual­i­ties I liked and left out the qual­i­ties I did not, and now I have a foun­da­tion that works for me. So if you want a nat­ural foun­da­tion and you tried one you didn’t like don’t give up, you just haven’t tried the right one, because once you do you will fall in love like the mil­lions of other min­eral makeup lovers out there.”

Rene is also gen­er­ous enough to give you read­ers a spe­cial discount!

Use “Shimmer” at check­out and save 10% off the entire order of 15$ or more! Here's the link to Heavenly Naturals

 And a very play­ful, vibrant blue makeup tuto­r­ial from her!