About Us

This page is currently a work in progress to share all the timelines and production processes for each of our products as an archive. We have brought you along for almost every product production so far across social media, so we want to curate that here for you to see the brand story and how we have evolved over the years without having to delve through years on social media- because let's be honest, that's like finding lost media. Over time, we will be adding tabs of all of our products so you can view how they've come to be what they are- or aren't today. If you notice anything out of place or not quite right, please feel free to let us know via our contact form. We are pulling these dates and progresses from our social medias over the years.Check out our story below.

HoloGrave Cosmetics

HoloGrave Cosmetics is a cosmetologist and LGBT owned indie brand that started in 2020. In addition to these things, I also personally struggle with OCD, ADHD, and much more which I try to turn into a strength when it comes to perfecting formulas and coming up with ideas and solutions, but it can be hard to be a founder-facing brand at times. I try to inspire those with similar issues and show that it is possible.

We started off handmade and have grown so much that I now get to work with some of the best cosmetic labs in the business to bring you revamped formulas of our original products and new formulations- all vegan, cruelty-free, and talc free and while still making our fragrances fully in house.

We started off with funding on Indiegogo and that initial cost + investment on my own got us the beginnings to pay for the start up to hand make cosmetics and source the materials for it. I started with glosses and some liners- expanding to creating my own eyeshadow, highlighter, liquid lipstick, and brow gel formulas- but quickly grew to where that was no longer possible for a single person to manage. I began searching everywhere for labs that would take over my formulas and either keep them or improve them to be more professional. We were turned away so much for wanting to remain talc free, but eventually found our place with some manufacturing labs. We continue to use these labs for our main brand, HoloGrave and our smaller brand, Hollowed. All of our fragrances are fully made in house still.

To this day, my brand is still growing and it's still ran by just myself with the help of some external help via customer service, ect. You can watch me test products, introduce new ones, and work together with me on formulations on our Tiktok, Instragram, Youtube, and Facebook. All @HoloGraveCosmetics

2015-2020

Coming Up With The Idea
- During this time, I attended cosmetology school while in high school and received my cosmetology license in 2017 when I graduated.
- I went on work at Ulta Beauty as a Prestige Manager after my short time at a shoe store, Converse, while I was in high school.
- While working at Ulta, I was able to receive some amazing training from brands and their reps directly, host makeup events, and more. Being so hands on with the makeup, skincare, fragrance, and customers gave me a passionate love for cosmetics.
- During this time, I dreamt up HoloGrave Cosmetics, down to even the name and theming, but could not pursue it due to my position.
- in 2020, I left Ulta for a position at H&M, and began the work right when Covid struck.
June-September 2020

Logo Design and Early Footing
- I took my stimulus check at the age of 21 and ran to get a logo made We received the final version of our brand logo in July and we were thrilled to begin.
- I started a (failed) Indiegogo with the first looks of our launching of 3 Embalming Gloss shades that I formulated and handmade right in house and a few stickers with a launch date of October 13th, 2020. The three shades were Veiled, Plague, and Altar. To date, Veiled is still around in a revamped form, Plague is gone, and Altar lives on as a similar Moon Water Liner shade.
- Around September, we added lashes to the mix for launch. Not handmade, but something to add to the line.
October 1st 2020

Launching- Early?
- I could not contain my excitement for the brand and launched about 12 days early on October 1st, instead of the 13th.
- We launched on Shopify, where we still remain today.
- In the grand scheme of things, we essentially sold not a singular thing until 2021, but that did not stop me.
- At this point, I did not have any aspirations for the brand besides it being a fun hobby for myself and a tiny bit of side income.
February - April 2021

Continuing to Innovate and Launch
- We began formulating and creating ideas around talc-free makeup. One thing I remembered at Ulta was that so many fun eyeshadow colors felt chalky and limited due to the talc. They felt dry and always left grey casts.
- I set out to make our brand fully talc-free. We already were from the glosses and decided to stick with it by creating and formulating handmade talc-free eyeshadows and water activated eyeliners.
- On March 10th, 2021, I unveiled our Moon Water Liners- the first (to our knowledge) talc-free water activated liners at the time. Many brands have reformulated to match this over the years as less and less people want talc, but we're proud to say this has been our formula since the beginning. We launched with 5 shades in April 2021- oBITCHuary (which became our most iconic name and color to date), Ghostly, Rotten, Pumpkin Guts, and Pushing Sunflowers. We wanted black and white and then to stay with spooky Halloween themes, we had the yellow and orange to make a Candy Corn bundle- plus a green because we felt Pumpkin Guts needed a pumpkin stem.
- Our shadows were in an in progress work for what felt like eternity. Now that we're used to lab production timelines- it really wasn't that bad, but it felt like forever when I was handmaking and formulating every single day.
May - August 2021

The Wildfire Begins
- When May 2021 hit, things were in full swing. HoloGrave was getting noticed here and there. We launched NON-STOP.
- In May 2021, we finally had a stellar talc-free eyeshadow formula (we called these Grave Dusts) and began launching singles of it on May 18th 2021.
- By June 2021, we were on fire. We launched our first pride collection by making a rainbow of Embalming Glosses, Single Grave Dusts, and a new product, our Fresh Flesh Lip Scrubs.
- Behind the scenes, we began work on our HoloCinogens and Ectoplasm Gels, but they're not how you likely remember them because we're still all handmade at this point in the brand journey.
- I started to have ideas of turning the pride collection into what did become our Pride Moon Water Liners, but didn't yet know how to achieve it with being handmade and having limited space and skill.
- From June - August 2021, the Shroom palette went from an idea to being fully created and launching on September 22nd 2021.
September - December 2021

Out of Control Viral
- The Shroom palette and collection launched on September 22nd, 2021 and with that came a taste of virality.
- We were still working on so many things, already revamping some packaging like our lip scrubs and more.
- I posted our Shroom collection on a Facebook Goblincore group and it went way further than I had dreamt. These palettes were selling like hotcakes... and I was still hand making and pressing all 9 shades in it. They sold out time and time again, week after week, and my hands were hurting.
- In November, 2021- I went viral again, this time on Tiktok for my iconic "How pigmented are our Moon Water Liners" and blacking out my arm with them videos. I had no idea what was happening. My phone was buzzing non-stop in the middle of the night and I woke up to hundreds of orders. My products were made to order, so inventory wasn't limited.
- This virality on Tiktok just kept happening from these style videos and I realized this just wasn't going to work.
2022 - 2023

Moving Production to Labs
- We spent most of 2022 moving our production to labs that would contract manufacture our formulas and improve upon them if need be.
- Because we got in contact with so many and things had picked up, we were able to formulate and launch many new products like our Funeral Proof Liners and Dagger Liners.
- We had such a hard time finding places that were willing to formulate without talc at the time, but by the end of 2022, we were getting many of our products made in the lab, even our eyeshadows finally! We relaunched the Shroom palette with lab made colors on November 22nd, 2022
- Even for things we were still making here like our glosses and liquid lipsticks, we were able to get amazing custom tubes for them by using the labs.
- We also expanded a little into merch, making our iconic coffin logo purses in 2022.
- in 2023, most things had been moved, so we really focused on new product lines. We were really ramping up our yearly revenue and felt that we could get some new innovative products in the lineup.
- We began working on our EyeCultist Eyeshadow Bases, Faux Flush Liquid Blushes, Iridescent Inks, Bladed Liners, and even started production of our coffin jars that we had designed years prior, but knew we couldn't make it happen at the time.
- Many of our labs also invested in the technology to start printing in holographic for me as well- meaning I no longer had to hand label products.
- By the end of 2023, we had the first physical look at our coffin jars, our Embalming Gloss production was also transferred over to a lab and we were in the first steps of doing the same with our Set In Stone Liquid Lipsticks.
2024

Our Best Year Yet
- 2024 was the pinnacle of success for us. I still yearn for the high of this year.
- By January, we had the final of our coffin jar in hand.
- We began working on the Build Your Own Moon Water Liner palettes.
- Essentially, the last thing we had handmade and therefore discontinued awhile back, our MoonShines, were working on getting moved to a lab.
- In May 2024, we launched our blushes and I broke the top of my foot falling down the stairs while carrying those boxes of blushes (a damper on the year, but still good).
- We were getting in consistent samples of the Faerie Ring palette for production and spent most of the year building that with our following.
- Really stepped up our image - got custom shipping boxes made, custom tarot themed business cards, and had the website professionally redesigned.
- Launched SnakeOil.
- Relaunched our Set in Stone Liquid lipsticks, now lab made. These have been compared to some of the best liquid lipsticks ever made by other brands and we realized we had a real winner on our hands. Possibly even bigger than Funeral Proof.
- By the end of the year, we had launched our coffin jars, finalized the Faerie Ring Palette, the BYOP, the MoonShines, and had it all together.
- Wrapped up 2024 as our most successful year to date for revenue and production.
2025 - Today

Working Through Tough Times
- Right when everything we spent all of 2024 making and finalizing was completing and getting ready to make its way to us, tariffs hit- things were rough. We made it through and continued with launches.
- Many of our ingredient manufacturers and even some labs closed in the rough patches and we were forced to find new ones and reformulate.
- In April of 2025, we were told an ingredient manufacturer our labs used shut down. They offered an ingredient found in our Funeral Proof Eyeliners and Liquid Lipsticks. Funeral Proof was our lifeblood, so we worked endlessly to get a replacement.
- Even though we found manufacturers of the same ingredient, they were in different forms, purities, melting points, textures, molecular sizes ect. They did not perform the same.
- We spent almost the entire year and over 30 trials (that were sent to me, not counting the total from the lab) to try to replace it.
- By July 2025, we had almost no Funeral Proofs left.
- I rented my first warehouse space, a scary, but exciting new $1,000 a month expense to inbound our Faerie Ring Palettes.
- We finally fixed the Funeral Proof ingredient sourcing issue and they returned in fall of 2025, late due to shipping issues like tariff inefficiency at ports and the lack of overall boats/planes going because businesses were trying to not import as much. They were only leaving once filled.
- I began working to learn Blender to try to make palette designs and began working with and formulating fragrances, slowly healing my sense of smell I had lost and never regained clear back around Covid.
- We were able to launch everything we had planned by the end of 2025. The BYOPs, the Faerie Ring Palette, our MoonShines, ect by the end of the year.
- We had essentially almost wrapped up our first fragrance formulation, Grave Mistakes.
- We launched our side brand, Hollowed, on December 21st, 2025.
- Moving into 2026, things have been a little better. Shipments are pretty much back to normal, we're working on fixing our Set in Stone Liquid Lipstick issues from 2025 now and so inventory on those are almost fully gone on the shades we haven't gotten a chance to reproduce yet.
- Our first fragrance, Grave Mistakes launched February 14th, 2026- our fragrances are fully formulated, compounded, and bottled in house. We're already working on the second one and working with fragrance has begun to heal my sense of smell.
- I've gotten very good at Blender and we're currently working with our following on the Fallen Empire palette, so keep an eye out for updates and voting on it!
- We have hope we'll hit the high of 2024 again, but thank you for sticking with us through the tough times.

February 2021

Formulating
- The first notes of formulation that I have for our Moon Water Liners were in February of 2021.
- These weren't an entirely new concept, but we knew we could only find ones with talc. The goal was to create a highly-pigmented talc-free water activated eyeliner, so that's what we did.
March - June 2021

Launching and More Creating
- On March 10th, 2021, I unveiled our Moon Water Liners- the first (to our knowledge) talc-free water activated liners at the time. Many brands have reformulated to match this over the years as less and less people want talc, but we're proud to say this has been our formula since the beginning. We Launched with 5 shades in April 2021- oBITCHuary (which became our most iconic name and color to date), Ghostly, Rotten, Pumpkin Guts, and Pushing Sunflowers. We wanted black and white and then to stay with spooky Halloween themes, we had the yellow and orange to make a Candy Corn bundle- plus a green because awe felt pumpkin guts needed a pumpkin stem.
- In June of 2021, when we launched our first ever Pride collection, I started to have ideas of turning the pride collection into what did become our Pride Moon Water Liners, but didn't yet know how to achieve it with being handmade and having limited space and skill.
November 2021 - December 2021

Virality and Pivoting
- In November, 2021- I went viral again, this time on Tiktok for my iconic "How pigmented are our Moon Water Liners" and blacking out my arm with them videos. I had no idea what was happening. My phone was buzzing non-stop in the middle of the night and I woke up to hundreds of orders. My products were made to order, so inventory wasn't limited.
- This virality on Tiktok just kept happening from these style videos and I realized this just wasn't going to work.
January 2022 - March 2022

Moving Production to Labs
- Realizing that my hands were doing worse everyday, we started looking for labs who do contract manufacturing and formula development. The eyeshadows we were making hurt my hands the most, but finding someone to make our talc-free formula was impossible. Water activated liners though? We found someone.
- During this time, we expanded the color range and began producing these in the lab. This meant we could make those Pride Liners come to life- and a few other plans like the SideShow Moon Water + Grave Dust Palette, and more product lines.
- We still had to hand label all of these liners because the lab could not print in holographic and I did not have the extra funds to pay for general labeling, so we did it all here.
May - June 2022

Pride Liners Launch
- We officially launched the Pride Liners that I had hoped for in 2020. We launched with just a few initial flags that we later expanded on + a few regular split liners to create bundles. We had pride bundles with our regular Moon Water Liners in just about every flag requested.
- These started off with just a simple coffin holo sticker and were in a circular container to mimic the idea of the shape of the moon.
June - July 2022

Updating and Inventing UV Black + Brown Water Activated Eyeliners
- In June, we did decide to swap logos from the holo coffin to the iconic Moon Water Liner logo that we have today to avoid confusion between our recently launched Funeral Proof line.
- In July, we also began publicly working on making UV colors never before seen. We had already had the rainbow of UV at this point, but we had never seen a UV black or a brown water activated eyeliner, so we invented it.
- This took FOREVER. Really, it was difficult. These ended up launching April 1st, 2023 with a clear one to make others UV- which we did not invent the concept of.
(There's a small amount of debate on this, but we have triple checked and all the ones available at this time were not for eye use - only body paint or they were sold as such, but did not glow and were only sold with UV lines of rainbow colors that glowed. We made videos and tested all the ones mentioned. Example of our Black UV reactive Comparisons. These have of course been recreated by this point now in other brands)
July 2022

The SideShow Palette Launches - With a Hitch
- We were able to create and launch our SideShow palette by having the newly found lab make singles of our Moon Water Liners and assemble them into palettes here.
- We were making the two color shadows inside by hand still, so these were still quite hard to keep stocked and keep up with.
- We had quite some incidents and learning lessons about Moon Water Liners creating condensation in clamshells while shipping in humid weather, which delayed the palette some, but taught us a valuable lesson for when we would later launch our Build Your Own Palettes.
- This palette was launched July 22nd, 2022
Remainder of 2022 - 2023

Swimming Along
- We continued releasing new shades consistently of Moon Water Liners, expanding our offerings to coming up on 100 shades
- The UV black and brown colors finally launched April 1st, 2023 after a very long process that we showcased on social media.
- In May of 2023, our lab informed us that they purchased the technology to print holographic labels for us- no more hand labeling!
2024 - Today

Still Here- Still Turning Our Graphic Liners
- In March 2024, we began working on the Build Your Own Moon Water Liner palettes, inspired by our original SideShow palette. so you could design it how you wanted
- By October 2024, we were having the same issues as the SideShow palette, but took this delay as an opportunity to design an even better BYOP (and I have to say, we outdid ourselves with the design)
- By February 2025, we received the BYOP shells and singles in every shade we carried and had an app coded for our website for it to function to launch in April 2025 with the 18 pan option.
- in April 2025, we discontinued our plastic jar 3g Moon Water Liners in order to avoid confusion between the 3g BYOP pans and to save warehouse space.
- In April 2025, we began formulating interference shades for the Faerie Ring palette and were able to make an orange one (Name Taker) which to this date, actually sells for less than it costs just because we wanted a rare, expensive orange pigment for the collection. We did it for the aesthetic.
- In May 2025, we showed off the new Pride Liner packaging and relaunched them with some new flags on June 13th 2025 some new flags- following feedback of difficultly getting even gradients from the circle containers (and I think we have 1 more redesign in us yet- stay tuned)
- On July 13th 2025, we launched our Faerie Ring collection with the interference Moon Water Liners
- In September 2025, we revealed the new 4 pan BYOP and launched them January 6th, 2025
- On March 10th, 2026 we were awarded our trademark for Moon Water Liner - how ironic exactly 5 years after they were unveiled.
- Now, in 2026, I feel like the graphic liner trends and wants for water activated eyeliner have almost died out, but we keep them alive. We're excited to keep expanding this line