- miko || 巫女 -

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 ]