An un-boxing and review of my GlossyBox, the UK November 2014 edition – this has actually been up for a while. I just completely forgot to link the video here.

My preferred format now for GlossyBox is a video unboxing and first impressions, and then a picture post where I give more in depth and sort of a post “new fancy box which has just arrived” feeling.

So, here is the October 2014 more in depth impressions review.

Here is the box overview: October was the lovely Pop Art Edition! The box is very pretty, and you’ll see more pictures of it below. This time, everyone was supposed to receive the Nuxe face mask, and a Ciate nail polish in any one of a number of products. There are four full sized items, and two sample sized items, and this has been the best value box I’ve received so far.

I’ll cover the full sized items first. First up is the Ciate London Paint Pot in the shade Pom Pom, which is a lovely pop art red (it’s also very Christmas-y, which is nice). This is £9 for 13.5ml, making it a bit pricey for nail polish, but it’s a very big size which is nice. The formula is very nice, lots of colour (you can get away with just one coat of this stuff if you’re in a hurry, but two is nicer) and it dries nice and fast. I have attempted to use it a little in my Essence Stamping set, and it isn’t admittedly a great stamping colour, but it is a great nail base colour. Despite usually being put off by higher price tags I can see how it would be worth it in this instance as the nail polish formula and colour is so nice, and you get so much of it. Very happy.

We have the Etre Belle Cosmetics Lip Lift Peel, it’s a little lip balm/lip gloss sized tube containing a moisturising, and exfoliating cream. It’s exfoliating in that it contains tiny – almost sand like – grains of material that you rub gently against your lips. It’s listed as €12.95 for 15ml, or £10.17 if you convert it with a currency converter. It does actually do what it’s supposed to do – it gently exfoliates. It doesn’t really do much in the way of moisturiser for me, and I will admit to being mostly still underwhealmed by this lip scrub, at just over ten pound I was expecting something more impressive. I already had a lip scrub from lush that costs about half the price, works just as well as an exfoliant, and tastes better anyway.

Next is the So Susan Cosmetics Flutter Mascara. This is listed as £14.95 for 4ml, and simply says it’s really black, and helps make and keep lash curls. I’ve said before that I like the ethos behind So Susan – making good makeup that works and isn’t bad for your face at the same time. I haven’t used this much, as I have lots of mascaras in waiting, and I use the stuff pretty much everyday. I can see why people complain about how often they receive mascaras with GlossyBox as it’s hard to get through them, this is at least my second one. As a mascara it is nice and black, but I found the formula was super wet – it dried very very slowly, meaning you have to wait quite a while if you do want to second coat. I don’t know if I want to try and be a bit naughty and leave it open on my table to make it dry a little and be less thin and wet – would that even work?

The last full sized item is the Nuxe Creme Fraiche De Beaute mask. This is listed as £19.50 for 50ml. I initially thought this was super expensive, and while it is still pretty pricey, I’m less worried about the price now that I’ve seen how many uses you actually get out of it. I’ve used it about twice a week since the October GlossyBox arrived, a few weeks ago now, and there’s still a fair amount left. It’s a very nice face mask – it’s a moisturising, soothing type rather than a clay and cleansing type – it’s actually the type I’ve been liking to use more and more as my skin is quite sensitive, and the cold air makes it dry. It has a strong, planty ‘natural’-y type smell, but I actually quite like it. I did get the best results rubbing this in well for about five minutes from the get go, and the leaving it as a moisturizer, rather than removing it after ten minutes. A really lovely higher end face mask – I would probably still balk a little at buying this full price, but it does work well.

The first of the two sample sizes was a lovely little perfume sample. I’ve been quite happy so far with the little perfume samples – they actually last quite a while. This one – Yves Rocher France Quelques Notes D’Amour – is £33 for the full 30ml size product, and £5.50 for the 5 ml sample size, which is actually a pretty big sample, one sixth of the full size. It’s a very nice strong, musky, floral type perfume – it’s scent is damascus rose, guaiac wood and patchouli. It smells a lot less…generic than the last perfume sample, the L’Amour by Lalique one. The packaging for the sample has been my favourite so far – it’s a cute little miniature perfume bottle with stopper, and I think would be nice to keep or re-use once empty.

Our final sample is a more high street (or drugstore) makeup sample – the Rimmel London BB Cream which is Matte, SPF 15, and in the lightest shade, Light. This is a cute little 8ml sample size, which is just a little under a third of the full sized product – £6.99 for 30ml, making the sample about £1.86. The fact that this is such as cheap sample to me is actually a good thing, as I can’t use mine. Like I assume a lot of BB creams that specifically target blemishes this contains Salicylic Acid – which my skin is pretty sensitive to. I was hoping I could get away with it if it was a small dose, but after swatching on my cheek in the video it made that patch pink. I guess this is why doing a test with cosmetics is so important. So I can’t really say if this is any good as a BB Cream in the end – I didn’t use it after this, and it’s just getting thrown out. It at least took up such a small fraction of the total value.

Final box value time! With four full sized items, and two sample, this box came in at £60.98, just over sixty pound is a great box value for only 10 plus shipping spent. Even if I redo the sums, and take out the value of the BB Cream since I threw it out, the box value is £59.12, and is still the best value box I have gotten so far. Like I’ve said before, for me there really is no question about the value of the subscription.

Pretty soon the November box will be here, which we already know will contain a full size eyeliner (this was the sneak peak in the October box), and a Burts Bees lip gloss (our online sneak peak) – I haven’t had a lip gloss in forever.