An environmental educator speaking about sea turtle conservation in front of the turquoise “turtle house" on Playa Teopa in Costa Careyes, Mexico, that was funded by Sweed BeautySweed BeautyWhile the bright blue sky fades into pinks and oranges as the tide sweeps over the sandy beach of Playa Teopa in Costa Careyes in Jalisco, Mexico, it’s not the scenic sunset that steals everyone attention, but rather the baby sea turtles that have been carefully released at the edge of the water to make their way into the ocean. Part of the Careyes Foundation, the nearly 40-year-old sanctuary oversees educational releases of hatchings and has safeguarded 184 nests, resulting in the release of approximately 6,900 baby turtles.On the expansive beach sits a turquoise “turtle house,” a dedicated space for staffers to protect turtle nests from predators, that opened in January 2026. The bright blue is the signature shade of Sweed Beauty, a Swedish brand that donated funds to build the structure. But their sea turtle do-gooder deeds don’t end there. For every Sweed mascara sold, the brand rescues one sea turtle with the Florida-based organization Billion Baby Turtles, which has saved more than 20 million turtle hatchlings at 60 nesting beach conservation projects in 25 countries.Sweed Beauty Cloud MascaraSweed BeautyWhen makeup artist Gabriella Elio founded Sweed Beauty in 2015, she always knew it would be a vegan brand. She wanted to do more than just help women look and feel beautiful. Growing up in Lebanon, her family had a pet turtle, and once they moved to Sweden, neighbors took over their pet’s care, and Elio still visits him when she goes to Lebanon now. That made turtles an easy choice for Elio.“Six out of seven species of sea turtles are endangered,” Elio says. “I love turtles; they are a resilient animal. They are doing so much for nature because 50 to 80% of the earth’s oxygen comes from the ocean. If we don't have enough turtles, it's really dangerous, because we will have more jellyfish, more sponges and so on. It's very important to help them.” Elio was determined to do something concrete to help, so Billion Baby Turtles shared exactly how much it costs to save one sea turtle and Sweed donates that amount from every mascara purchased. Sweed Beauty Founder and Makeup Artist Gabriella ElioSweed BeautyLuckily, between their Lash Lift Mascara and Cloud Mascara, Sweed sells a lot of mascara, which was one of their first products after launching with false lashes. Even Sabrina Carpenter is a fan. “When I look back at it, it's so difficult to launch a mascara; if someone would tell me go do a mascara today, I would be so scared, because you want to do something good that is unique,” Elio says. “After three weeks [post launch], it was sold out. The brush really lifts the lashes, and I think there was a gap in the market for that kind of brush.”Introduced to the US in 2023, Sweed Beauty has gone viral globally for their eye products, especially their Eyelash Growth Serum. Elio was instrumental in its formulation. “Our serum is very clean,” she says. “It doesn't have prostaglandins. It took a couple of years until people understood that it was effective and it doesn't have any hormones. When I did the formula, no one was talking about prostaglandins, so it was just me, trying to do something good, but no one was noticing [at first]. But it spread through word of mouth.”Sweed Beauty The Eyelash Growth SerumSweed BeautyElio started Sweed Beauty with false eyelashes because at the time it was hard to find natural-looking ones. She has stayed true to her commitment to Scandinavian simplicity and minimalism ever since. “When I launched the brand, it was mainly for myself to use it on my clients when I was doing makeup, and then other makeup artists started using the lashes because they were so natural, fine and very easy to apply—that's what made them unique,” she says. “A lot of makeup artists, especially in the US, were using the brand for red carpets and so on, and then our customers were like, ‘you should do makeup products as well.’”Now Sweed Beauty offers a full makeup range and brushes, plus their Eyelash Growth Serum has proven so popular that they launched The Hair Serum by customer demand. However, they stick to a tight edit in each category. Elio’s beauty career started out in retail, when she worked at a popular Swedish beauty brand’s store. Though the brand no longer exists, she learned exactly what customers are looking for—and what they want to avoid. The Sweed Beauty “turtle house" plaque in Costa Careyes, MexicoSweed Beauty“My philosophy is to simplify it and to remove all the shelf-warmers,” Elio says. “For example, that store that I worked in, they had almost 50 lipstick shades, so you could find everything, but five of them were the ones that sold—the rest were just there. I wanted to reduce that experience. Why complicate things?”Instead, Elio designed all of the shades to work across a range of skin tones. “They are so highly pigmented; we have a makeup artist quality,” she says. “As makeup artists, we love when you can get a lot of color payoff because we want to see that things happen. The shades work on everyone. You can choose if you want a little bit or more and intensify it. The first hour, it doesn't matter how it looks on the skin; you want to know how it's going to look after 12 hours, 15 hours—that's when you know the performance of a product.”Sweed Beauty Glass Skin FoundationSweed BeautySweed came to the US just as Scandinavian beauty brands started to explode in popularity. The brand regularly receives organic celebrity endorsements (including from Jasmine Tookes and Nikki Glaser), and they’ve expanded to retailers including Nordstrom, Credo Beauty, Amazon and The Detox Market. “The Scandinavian philosophy of how we live is very much part of Sweed,” Elio says. “I'm all about less is more. It's better to focus on quality with a few things and to stick to that. We love to wear comfortable clothes, comfortable fabrics, timeless styles. When you're doing your makeup, one thing that I learned early on is you don't want to look at a photo and be like, ‘what did I do there?’ It's so cool to find yourself. I don't believe in trends.”That always comes through in Elio’s work as a makeup artist. She would ask clients when they felt the most beautiful and try to emulate that with her work. “Women can feel more confident with wearing makeup, in the right way, like it needs to be,” she says. “They need to feel more like themselves.” Thanks to Sweed, they can do that while saving sea turtles.