This month’s (or last month’s at this point) GlossyBox was the lovely limited edition packaged Valentine’s Day edition. It’s a lovely pink and white minimalist box with pretty text – I actually think this is one of my favourite box designs. It’s very cute. This month’s box contains five lovely full size products, and a sweet Valentine’s Day appropriate freebie in the form of a mini roll of Love Hearts – I saved mine ’til the day itself (I may have been looking forward to a free sweet from GlossyBox for a while). I did the unboxing video over on YouTube on the 11th of February.

First , we have a Wilkinson Sword Hydro Silk Razor. It feels a bit silly calling this a full sized product – it’s not like you can get a sample size razor – but go with it. The Hydro Silk is a fancy women’s razor with a big, smooth, ergonomic, slightly squishy handle, and a big, rotating head with five thin blades surrounded on either side by moisturising strips. The strips are supposed to provide hydration for up to two hours after shaving, and this is probably true, but I honestly don’t notice my legs being dry within two hours of bathing. I usually notice the next night. The important bits are that it’s easy to use and it does shave hair. If anything, I would say the moisturising strips are more of a hindrance while shaving, as the strip moistens the actual act of shaving feels smoother and smoother until it’s hard to feel if you’re actually getting all the hair – but a good swishy rinse gets rid of the smooth residue build up. The whole thing costs £9.99, which gets you one handle and one head. I won’t be buying a new one mostly because I don’t see the economy in buying these fancier razors that need to have their heads regularly replaced – it’s a nice shave, but it’s not worth it that much to me.

Next up, is the Marsk Mineral Eyeshadow in the shade ‘Fifty Shades’ – and to start off, yes it’s inspired by ‘that film’, and no I don’t care – I care if the eyeshadow is any good. It’s a small pot of loose mineral powder eyeshadow with a loose foundation style open top. It’s a graphite/pencil grey in colour with flecks of tiny glitter in lots of shades – grey, white, blue – the overall effect is actually quite pretty. Wearability wise it’s a very buildable eyeshadow, just a light wash and you get barely any of the grey solid colour and a little glitter, built up in layers and you get the deep shine grey pencil colour with the full range of glitter colours. As it’s a mineral based eyeshadow it’s packaging also adds that it’s talc, paraben, fragrance and GM free. Oh, and they don’t do animal testing, which is still a good thing to mention, even though I’m pretty sure the EU ban on animal tested cosmetics probably covers that. While I do think this eyeshadow is very pretty – the downside is that it’s proportionately the most expensive item in the whole box. The nondescript pot is just over a gram (1.2g specifically) and even if it is very cute in it’s smallness, it costs £14.49, which is an off putting price.

Our third item is another cutely small full-sized pot – the Royal Apothic Tinties – which is a tinted lip butter. Mine is in the shade ‘Coral’. This little pot feels premium just in the packaging – the box is cute and the little pot is glass with a metallic fancy lid. It’s an oily rather than a waxy formula, with shea butter and oils – and it does feel very good for your skin, and smells lovely too – like sweet almond or coconut. The colour is very subtle – definitely just a tint, but’s a very pretty colour, and the oils make it shiny and pretty on the lips. Like the mineral eyeshadow this item is more expensive for what it is – ten pound (or £9.16 to be specific) for 3.4g of tinted Lip butter is pretty steep – you can definitely get an equivalent item (without the fancy name and look) for just a few pounds. Again, it’s a case of it’s nice…but it’s not that nice.

We’ve got a So Susan item up next (our third item from this brand in a GlossyBox) and it’s the Rose Quartet Lip and Cheek Stain in the shade selection ‘Warm Rose’. This is a little black mini palette with four on the firm side cream tints – with a total weight of 4g, you get just 1g per shade, so it is a small amount – but these little squares are pigmented enough that a little goes a long way. In the Warm Rose palette you get a very “red” red, a bright pink, a coral, and a light baby pink – they’re all on the warm side. There’s enough of a range to suit most people in terms of lip colour and blush, and using the same colour for both gives you a very well put together look. In terms of practical wear for me, I’d say the firmness of the cream makes these a little impractical as a blush – they don’t blend as well as I’d like. Also, for all that it’s a small palette (suggesting it’s been designed as a hand bag item) and it’s not dirt cheap – it doesn’t have a mirror, which it needs, and it has a little brush, which it really doesn’t need. Like all So Susan items, one of the big selling points is that it’s free from lots of things (mineral oil, phthalates,triclosan, sulfates, fragrance), and it’s good for your skin (hypoallergenic and non-comedogenic). It’s £8 for this little palette, and honestly while it’s nice – I’m not as wowed as I think I could be by it – maybe if it had a mirror and lost the brush.

Our last item is from the SuperDrug brand B.Cosmetics – their Defined Eyebrow Kit in the shade ‘Dark’. This is a big compact style container with a wax for shaping the brows and catching/holding the colour, two different shades of brown to choose from, and a highlighting gel to finish the look. This pretty well thought out product has a double sided brush – an brow/shadow style end and a spoolie/mascara end – that is pretty usable, though I would say the brow/shadow brush is a touch too on the firm and plastic-y side. The other point in this kit’s favour is they’ve put in a great big mirror – so you can actually see to put this stuff on your face. Practicality wise, you could actually get away with using this little kit for a lot of things. I found the darker of the two brow shades is too dark for my brows but you can use it gently with the brush as a shadow eye liner to make your eyes more defined. The highlighting gel is a nice bonus, which you could use for both brows and general highlighting, though since there’s only one pan of this it would get used up quickly. Ingredients wise it has a much more standard ‘drug store’/’high street’ list of a fair few things. The brow kit is £9.99 for 3.32g of product, and I would probably consider buying it again.

The Love Hearts – as I said in my unboxing video – are worth about 12p for a small roll with about 6/8 sweets in it, if you want to add it’s value to the box. Mostly, it’s a cute and thoughtful treat.

The final box total, with five full sized items, comes to £51.63. This sits comfortably high on the value side – while it’s not the most expensive box I’ve ever gotten, it is up there – and there’s no question that the contents of my box are worth more than the £10 plus shipping I paid. My overall feeling of this box is actually very happy – all of the items could be used quite well together in a single Valentine’s Day look, and while not a lot of them are things I will re-buy personally (it’s fine to be honest about that), they’re all lovely things to try, and I will use all of them up. My favourite item/s are probably either the brow kit, because it’s so well thought out, or the Tinties lip butter, because it’s so lovely.

In March GlossyBox are selling both the regular box (which I think is just a regular regular box) and a limited edition Mother’s Day box, which I won’t be getting – I’m not really interested in. We’ve also already had a sneak peak for next month, one of the full sized items we will be getting is Naobay’s gently skin peeling facial milk – which sounds interesting. Until next time.

We’re at the end of the first month of this new, shiny 2015. For me, it didn’t feel like it went too slow or too bad. It’s been a bit cold, and we’ve had a few bad weather days here and there, but we’re nearly at February, and February’s lovely looking Valentine’s GlossyBox – so I thought it was definitely time to do my in-depth review of January’s box.

The first box of 2015 was all full sized, more ‘value’ items – hence it having a lower total value than previous box’s – but that by no means makes this a bad box. There are five products to get through, and I’ll just go in the same order as the card in my box.

First off is the MeMeMe Cosmetics Eye Line Pencil in the shade ‘Clay’. MeMeMe Cosmetics is a brand I’ve heard of before – they notably do some very good Benefit dupes – and are available through their own online store only as far as I can tell. This full sized, regular format eye pencil is a nice basic brown, with a very soft formula that does apply smooth. It isn’t fantastic for smudging in my opinion, as the colour thins out quite a lot with just a little smudging, but layering would fix this. It’s smells like a regular pencil, has clearly listed ingredients, and even a use by date printed on the side. I really like it when makeup has this – who really remembers when they bought each individual piece of makeup? The pencil costs £4, which isn’t the cheapest you could get an eyeliner (MUA’s eye pencils are very nice for all of £1), but it’s nice enough.

Next is the Nicka K New York Colorluxe (or Colourluxe – it’s hard to resist adding the u) Powder Blush. This is an interesting item which I think is supposed to be sold as an ‘on the go, throw in the bag’ style item – the product, applicator, and mirror all in a single item. The blush itself is a nice pale pink – the shade listed is Romantic – with no sparkle or shine and suits my paler complexion quite well. However, it smells awful – an unpleasant sour/off smell that was worse inside the actual container, but as I’ve used it more and more you can clearly smell it on the puff. Now, I do get that it’s not like people will smell it, and you can’t smell it yourself when it’s on, but it’s so strange to have a weird smelling make up item. The puff part is good for applying the blush itself, I will give it that – giving a very light coating which you can layer, but go even a little over and you’ll have to find a brush to blend it out anyway – making it not so all in one. Added to this the obvious problem of hygiene – I’m not confident it’s supposed to be removed and washed. Other than that it’s nice and soft. The mirror is a nice touch, though a little on the small side. Overall I think it’s an interesting idea, but not really practical. It’s full sized at 5g of powder inside the applicator, and costs £6.97 (converted from Euros.)

Full sized item number three is from Jelly Pong Pong (apparently part of So Susan Cosmetics, we’ve had nice things from them in the past) and it’s their All Over Glow. The bottle describes it as an ‘illuminating gel’ – usable as a highlighter, or all over. As a highlighter it’s very nice – glowy without seeming greasy. As an all over type product, either used sparingly on it’s own or in a moisturiser to make it easier it reminds me of Boots Seventeen’s Skin Wow Primer – which gives a similar glowly-ness (though the Skin Wow has more obvious glitter pieces in it as well). The gel is in an easy to use tube, which you squeeze out to reveal the quite dark, brown/bronze gel. On first look I was worried it would be too dark for me, but actually it blends out much lighter, and silvery. The only real downside I’ve found so far is it does leave a fair amount of residue on your finders, which dries fairly quickly, meaning I suppose that you’ve lost a little product – but then this drying quality is probably what makes it look and feel non-greasy. It’s full sized at 15 g of product (actually pretty generous) for £10. This makes it the most expensive individual item in the box, but it does feel worth it.

Kueshi’s Natural & Pleasant (or Pure & Clean as the bottle says) Revitalizing Face Toner is another great item this month. I’m not sure how popular toners are anymore, but I use them. I’ve read a lot of people saying they do nothing but this isn’t the case for me. A good toner should do what all those fancy Micellar Cleansing Waters claim to do – clean and soothe the skin without leaving it feeling dry, usually with some added skin boosting ingredients. Kueshi isn’t a brand I’ve heard of before (I use the Simple Toner – the one with Camomile and Witch Hazel) so I didn’t have any expectations with this one. But it’s a lovely toner – it’s very nice on, and while it has a very strong smell (kind of a sweet, generic bath item smell) it’s actually pretty pleasant. The little push top lid and opening works well, a few big drops is all you really need, it dries nicely and doesn’t feel residue-y. I do also like that it’s pink to be honest, it’s cute. It’s ‘good for your skin’ ingredients are listed as Aloe Vera, Camomile, and Calendula. The first two are obvious skin soothers, but I’d never heard of Calendula – and that’s because it’s an alternative name for Marigold. According to Wikipedia (as I still had no clue what use Marigold has) it’s a natural anti inflammatory, and antiseptic. This toner is probably better for my skin than my current one, but it is more than twice the price at £8.34 (converted from Euros) for 200ml. It’s really very nice – but might not be worth the price tag in the end.

The final item is a nice little lip balm from Naked Lips – their Organic SuperFruits Lip Balm to be specific. It’s a very nice idea – a very basic, fuss free packaging, and no colour formula, but full of things that will actually be good for you, right? The ingredients list also takes care to list all the easy to read names of its ingredients, so we can see it’s made with lots of moisturising oils and fruit oils. The brand also makes a point of mentioning how non-waxy their formula is. It’s not wax free (it contains beeswax), but it does sit more on the ‘oily’ side rather than the ‘waxy’ side of how it feels on the lips. This always seems to be the awkward thing about lip balms, because they need to provide moisture, as well as create some sort of barrier to hold that moisture in – so lip balms pretty much always contain oils and wax, which isn’t always pleasant. This one is nice enough to wear, and isn’t the oiliest I’ve ever owned (I mean oily in a bad way, and I’m referring to a Palmers lip balm, which felt awful to wear) – it smells delicious, though doesn’t taste as strong as it smells. One of the problems I have with this type of product is I’m always reminded of that funny dairy advert that talks about milk and yoghurt and stuff being good for your skin with pretty women pouring dairy products all over themselves…but then it says really it would be better if you ate the real thing. It’s a nice enough lip balm, but it isn’t life changing. Full sized it’s 4.25 g, which is about average for a lip balm, and costs £3.89 (again converted from Euros.)

So that’s the last item from the box, and the total value was £33.20 for five full sized items – the cheapest being the lip balm, and the most expensive being the illuminizer. This is the second lowest value box I’ve gotten so far from GlossyBox, my lowest being August 2014‘s at £29.33, which is only £4 or so different, but this January box I can say is easily better. It’s a good example I think of a more ‘value’ box (basically full of bigger, more affordable items) – I really like the toner and the Illuminizer, the eye pencil and lip balm is nice enough, and the only not 100% sure of item is the blush. After having done eight months so far of GlossyBox there always seems to be something worth having each time. I can’t wait to see what’s in the Valentine’s Box. Until then.