- miko || 巫女 -

[Note: Okay, this is super late and without pictures - I took some, but I've just been busy / unmotivated with regard to posting anything. But I want to write something about July's products, and the text of this was already written, so here goes.]

This month's Ipsy brought me my first damaged/contaminated product! A few months ago, this happened with a lip gloss, but I received one that was fine... this time, though, I definitely got one of the bad ones. Ipsy responded to my email and told me they'd send out another product in its place - but then they sent me the same product again, and I couldn't bring myself to trust it, so that was a bit of a stupid resolution.

Other than that, things continue about as usual. The bag this month is from some designer (well, the pattern on it), and it's actually not bad. I expected to hate it, but the material doesn't feel awful and I'm actually using it to corral some things in my purse. If you're getting these and wondering what to do with them, I highly recommend it as a way to tuck away spare pads, bandaids, hair things, etc... I was always losing, crushing or just dirtying these things in my purse before, so this is way better and also make it easy to switch bags.

Here's what I got this month:

NYX - Butter gloss in "Crème Brulee" ($5, 6.5 g)

Everyone received this lip gloss in one of three colours - the one I got is very neutral. It's got a doe foot applicator and smells like vanilla. The smell isn't as noticeable once it's on. The description of butter gloss disturbs me as I feel it on my lips... who in the world would want to smear butter on their lips? Now I can't un-feel it. It's quite a sticky lip gloss when you put it on - despite the claim that it's "never sticky" from NYX.

Either the colour is very sheer or it's too close to my lip colour to be notable. It slightly lightens them, but anywhere that the product gathers looks like... you know when your lips have a raised bit of dead skin - not dry, just raised, like when your lips were stuck together too long? Yeah, kinda like that. Ick. It's glossy, but really not what I'd look for in a lip product.

The company also suggests layering it, but I can't imagine why I would want to make one of my lipsticks less attractive or pleasant feeling.

OFRA - Universal Eyebrow Pencil (0.4 g, $13)

I realize I am not the target audience of this product, since the only reason I would want to make my eyebrows more solid would be for a groucho Marx costume.

This feels like rubbing a soft pastel (my brain said "greasepaint") into my eyebrow. Perhaps I don't know how to apply it, but it gummed up my eyebrows something fierce and felt really weird. The colour seemed fine (lighter than my eyebrow, but coherent underneath it), and the pencil itself draws on my hand pleasantly and is soft and pigmented, but...



In this case, I would have preferred one of the alternates.

Alternatives:
Nicka K New York - Shimmer Eyeliner in "Blue" or "Green"
Jesse's Girl - Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner

Be a Bombshell - Lash Out Mascara ($15, 9 g)

Oh dear, here's the disaster product. I popped this open and immediately recoiled from the smell - acrid, like burning rubber, and strong enough to make your eyes sting even at a reasonable arm's length. I obviously did not try applying this to myself.
It's clear in retrospect that I would have preferred something I could use, but, looking at the list of alternates, the mascara really was the best choice for me. None of the rest are nearly as interesting - if the product hadn't had this problem, I would have been happy to try it.

Alternatives:
Ole Henriksen - Truth To Go Cleansing Wipes
Skinn - Olive & Enzyme Cleanser
Dermadoctor - DD Cream
Laneige - BB Cushion
clarisea - sea salt solutions face rapid detox charcoal exfoliant
MDSOLARSCIENCES - Mineral Tinted Crème Broad Spectrum SPF 30 UVA-UVB Sunscreen
Essence of Beauty - Wind Kissed perfume spray

Realtree - for Her [perfume] ($7, 0.34 oz)

Hey, do you know what the Realtree brand is? I didn't, but man... nothing says "try this perfume" like a website filled with dead animals (http://www.realtree.com/). It's a camouflage brand that apparently also wants to sell you perfume.

But hey - if your sample can't be useful, it should at least be amusing, right? So props for being the weirdest brand/product combination I've seen yet.

I don't like the smell of this perfume at all. It brings nothing to mind except that it smells like a children's perfume - it flashed me back to storing smelly toys in plastic milk bags to keep them from driving us all nuts. Good on Realtree for sending these out in tiny sealed ziploc bags, given that!

Same alternates list as above - these were "two of" options.

Alternatives:
Ole Henriksen - Truth To Go Cleansing Wipes
Skinn - Olive & Enzyme Cleanser
Dermadoctor - DD Cream
Laneige - BB Cushion
clarisea - sea salt solutions face rapid detox charcoal exfoliant
MDSOLARSCIENCES - Mineral Tinted Crème Broad Spectrum SPF 30 UVA-UVB Sunscreen
Essence of Beauty - Wind Kissed perfume spray

Marc Anthony - Dream Waves Beach Spray, ($3, 45 mL)

First things first, I looked up the video of what I was supposed to do with this product... and it is creepy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhEZat-xVQY

Stop... saying... sexy. Also, the look at the end of it is largely just disheveled to my eye, so I didn't have great expectations for it.

So, basic application, spray it on hair and then heat and scrunch to get waves. After attempting to use this product, I think it's not really useful for someone with long, unlayered hair. It does actually curl up the ends rather amusingly, but only the bottom 10 inches or so, which looks weirdly inconsistent on me. Sorry I didn't take pictures, but I found the texture unpleasantly like having horribly messy hair and had to brush it out. It gummed up my brush with white residue too, bleah.

It will give you volume by way of having slightly sticky product and it will make your hair smell somewhat of coconut. If you're more effective with a hairdryer and have shorter, layered hair, you may get some amusing curls... or you may get a scruffy mess, per the video.

I'm may give it another shot with curlers or something, but mostly it's a novelty for me.

Alternatives:
Dove - Pure Care Dry Oil Shampoo
Carol’s Daughter - Sacred Tiare Styling Cream

Summary:

- Date received: 2014-06-12
- Cost: $14.95 + conversion
- Value: $43 - except without the mascara, really only $28.

Well, the horrible Be a Bombshell mascara sort of crushed my enthusiasm to do anything about this bag. When I finally did try the rest, they were all pretty mediocre for me... nothing in there that I see getting a lot (or in some cases, any) use.

This month's Ipsy bag has arrived! Up front, I'm going to say: after two months, I'm happily confident that I picked the right subscription service for me. I've been having overnight insomnia and reading a lot of blogs, and Ipsy is the closest to what I want - Makeup, not general products (moisterizers, peels, etc are not of interest to me), and at a reasonable price (even if I think the retail value of makeup is horrifically overpriced) for the level of entertainment.

Seeing my "Glam Room" (aka, Ipsy's website tells you what you're getting when they ship the bag), I was initially concerned that I'd be disappointed in getting the fragrance and false lashes options... but upon consideration, I really wasn't. Pre trying anything, I was still happy at the randomness and pleased to get a fragrance set where I can compare the men's and women's equivalent. No idea if I'll be willing to attempt false eyelashes (hardly seems worth it), but maybe I'll want them for costume some day.

Here's the overall shot of what I got this month:



The bag itself is worlds better than last month's. If I didn't already have a case for my 3DS, it might have been a contender (although it's a little tall, and I'd be bothered by the unsquare top left corner). The little diamonds are actually puffy/squishy, which amuses me to no end and makes it somewhat more protective. The zipper tag says Ipsy, as well.

( On to the specifics )

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Summary:

- Date received: 2013-12-16
- Cost: $14.95 + conversion
- Value: $50

Overall, I'm amused by this bag. Sure, some of the other options might have worked out a bit better for me, but I got random stuff and I tried it and that's all I needed.

If you're inspired to sign up and would like to use my referrer link (it gets me some points that can be redeemed for extra products), you can click through to Ipsy here: http://www.ipsy.com/r/1tpj

Forewarned is forearmed: This post is long and picture heavy.



Do you want a ton of information about a beauty box subscription? Sure you do.

I'm not much for makeup, really, and don't bother with it the majority of the time. I like blindboxed things, though: as a kid, I quite liked the Kinder Surprise toys, and I followed up with D&D minis in later years, but my options to get that kick are badly limited - minis got very expensive for fewer mysteries in the box; Kinder Surprise toys are terrible these days (you don't even build anything... it's usually just a hunk of plastic); and there's only space for so many plastic ponies on my desks.

Links to subscription boxes showed up on my internet doorstop, though, and triggered that same interest in me. I looked at subscription boxes that seemed like they would be targeted toward my interest (geeky things, typically), but all I could think when I saw what had come in them was "geez, that is a pile of useless crap." Most of those boxes are also more expensive and less random, which is a disappointment for my blindbox cravings. I want something with a limited cost that I will be amused by even if I don't get anything notable.

So here we are: makeup. I kind of like makeup, but in a novelty sense - I don't feel like I need it, so most of my minimal collection was bought for costume purposes, and only used a few times. That makes buying anything other than the cheapest makeup feel silly, and made Ipsy a solid choice for me: cheap, ships to Canada, largely random and heavily makeup products. That last one is in comparison to other similar boxes... I have even less interest in "beauty products" than makeup, because their absurd claims drive me nuts. At least makeup typically does the core thing it suggests: puts colours on your face.

With that context, here we go:

( Onward! )

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Summary:

- Date received: 2013-11-12
- Cost: $14.95 + conversion = $16.02
- List value in box: $64 (with some estimating). Note that Ipsy indicates a $96 dollar value on their splash page; probably based on whatever the most expensive products you could receive were.
- Reality: I can't imagine paying the prices listed, and I feel like makeup is probably another industry where you might as well wait for sales because everything's overpriced at list. That said, I feel like I got my money's worth of entertainment out of this box.
- "Receive one of X products" worked well for me. Profile or luck, I'm happy. Not every product was a hit, but that's to be expected.
- I'm still pretty hilariously bad at makeup, and the lighting in my house is terrible.

[Post edit 2013-11-16: Fixed some formatting, moved obvious image descriptions into alt tags, and moved the overall image outside the cut for ease of reference.]

[Post edit 2013-12-29: Price, and also tried to stop being paranoid. Here's the referrer link if you feel like signing up and want to use it: http://www.ipsy.com/r/1tpj ]