So April’s GlossyBox was the ‘Iconic Hollywood’ Edition, with some make up items to create an iconic Hollywood look, and some beauty items that come highly recommended. This box contains three full sized items, and two deluxe sample/smaller sized items, alongside the usual product card and editors letter. Lastly there’s a discount code for FineryLondon – which I’m less fussed about. You can see my original un-boxing here. The box also has a pretty design, with everyone’s box having a lovely picture of Marilyn Monroe on the top, and then a different colour scheme (either green, blue, yellow, or pink), and a chance to get one of four different quotes printed inside.
The first listed product is the Lord & Berry Lipstick Pencil (their 20100 crayon line) in the shade ‘Kiss’. It’s a small pencil format, thick but not as chunky as the plastic case ‘chubby’ style lipsticks you can buy, with a clear plastic lid. You get 1.8 grams for £10 in this full sized product, which so far hasn’t seemed terrible value due to the pigmentation. It’s a nice, strong, vivid colour, and a little goes a fairly long way. It’s a very vibrant matte red, a pillar box style hue as the card states. Since it has a fairly creamy consistency, it can be worn on its own and not feel too dry, or layered over a smidgen of lip balm – though wearing it this way makes it more shiny than matte. I actually really like the pencil, it’s super easy to use, and a very nice colour – bold, but it still seems pretty wearable, and I think I’d be tempted to buy more for sure.
Next up is our first deluxe size/smaller size product, and it’s the Astral Original Face & Body Moisturiser. I say ‘/smaller size product’ because you can actually buy it this size, as it’s just the smallest size you can buy, but it feels very deluxe sample size. This is a very rich, emollient (think E45 cream) style moisturiser with a reasonably strong sort of medicinal smell, it sits on top of your skin and skins in very slowly – meaning it is very residue heavy, but it works well as a moisturiser. Converting the listed price on the card (£3.89 for 200 ml) our 50 ml tub is priced at £0.97, but you can also buy the 50 ml on it’s own, with a price that varies from £1 to a lot less. After my first initial use I was a little sceptical of this moisturiser, but over time it’s grown on me – part of it’s appeal seems to be in using it in whatever way is best way for you. I don’t think personally I could stand to use this as a facial moisturiser, as it’s too slow absorbing and residue-y and this really bugs me – the cream has a lot of other things you can use it for however: it works very well as an intense face mask (putting on a ‘thicker than just moisturising my face’ layer for about 10 minutes) which you can then clean off giving you absorbed moisture without the residue, it’s very nice as an intense body moisturiser for little dry patches, it’s nice enough for moisturising nails and hands, and finally you can use it to remove make up, which I’ve tried out and works pretty good actually. So it definitely has it’s uses, and it’s nice enough. Value wise I can see how this doesn’t feel very ‘Glossy’ – since it seems pretty basic – but that doesn’t mean it’s bad for what it is. I think a larger size might have felt better value. I’m also not sure I’d re-purchase this, because while it is good to have rich moisturisers that are body and face safe, I already have one that I really like that works well, and isn’t residue heavy (my go to Nivea Soft) that is a very similar value.
The second full sized item is the POP Beauty Kajal Eye liner Pen – this is a double ended eye liner pencil, with one end being the product, and the other a nub of sponge to use as a blending tool, and both ends have clear lids. The shade is listed as ‘Sooty Black’ and this eye liner is 0.9 g costing £6.50 – making it a fairly affordable but not dirt cheap eye liner. I have mixed feelings about this eye liner – it has a nice rich black colour when it goes on, but on it’s initial application this can blends out to nothing, and rub away. The nub of sponge on the end is nice enough, though using the pencil heavily and the sponge sparingly seems to work best. I also found the wood of the pencil shaft to be very brittle, which can make it pretty hard to sharpen without breaking it – which makes me worry about how long this pencil will last. It’s not terrible, but I don’t think I’d re-buy this eye liner personally.
The last full size product is the Color Club Nail Polish, a reasonably well known American brand that is more on the ‘budget’ side at £4.10 for 15 ml, which is a pretty big size for a nail polish, and is the same typical size of more premium polish brands we’ve had before. The colour I received is ‘Barely There’ and is a neutral light nude colour. It has a pretty strong scent as nail polishes go, and is definitely less pigmented than the premium polishes – I find four coats to be enough to really build up the colour and not be able to see the white nail tip of my own nail underneath. And as you can imagine four coats of polish takes a fair while to do. I would say you could be satisfied with less, depending on the look you were going for – I think one coat gives a shiny, slightly nicer than natural nails look and is wearable, and three coats is something you could live with. The polish is very easy to use, actually pretty quick drying, and fairly sturdy once on – these are all really good points in its favour. I think the thing I’m actually least into is the colour – I’m not really into nude nails, they look a little strange. So I do think Color Club is worth buying for a good price, but I don’t think I want another nude polish.
And finally the last item in this box, which isn’t listed as being full size is the IDC Scented Garden Country Rose Luxury Body Lotion. One of the things I did try with this product is track down who made it – it’s made by Aquarius Cosmetics, a Spanish company that seems to specialise in cosmetics and beauty items – from what I could gleam from their website they sell sets of bath stuff, and sets of make up to buy for people as gifts. This item does pretty much still feel like something you’d get in a set for Christmas from a discount store. It’s a watery, strong smelling lotion, and is listed as being worth £3.59 for 100 ml. There isn’t really much else I can say – I wouldn’t buy this for myself but then I think this might be a pretty moot point since I’m not sure I’d be able to buy one in the UK anyway.
So that’s all the items in the box now that I’ve had some time to really try them out – I do think I’d use all of the items in this box, but the lip pencil, the astral and the nail polish are the ones I’ve actually been using enthusiastically – the other two items seem a little disappointing in comparison still. The final value for the box is £25.16 – making this the lowest value box I’ve ever had (the second lowest now being August 2014 box, at £29.33 – though that felt like a better box) which still makes this box better value than what you pay for it – £10 plus the postage of £3.25 for me – but this box feels a little underwhelming this month more than other cheap boxes. I’m hoping I’ll be more wow-ed by next months box, especially since it’ll be my 12 box, otherwise it’s also possible that the appeal of these is wearing off for me or something and it might be time to try something new.
Until Next Time.
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