This is also a rather late blog due to reasons explained in my last blog post and I needed time to recover from the trauma I experienced when unboxing my last beauty box featured in my blog, which was birchbox, it’s safe to say after the experience of broken product and warehouse dirt I will most definitely be sticking to glossy box only for now!
It’s safe to say my mood was instantly improved by ti’s bundle of refreshing goodies!
The theme of this box was “holiday haul” and whether you were going away and looking to take a few travel sized goodies away with you to keep you refreshed on your travels or you were coming home and feeling tired from travel, this box was amazing!
The boxes items were mainly travel sized items that were easy to carry around apart from the mannakadar mascara which was full sized along with the boots tea tree witch Hazel face mask but that obviously doesn’t need to be travel sized, it’s a one use product in a small package.
I couldn’t fault this box as usual with glossybox, problems aren’t typical with them, their boxes are usually really well thought out and it was buisness as usual with this edition. I felt refreshed just looking at the products in this box! It’s everything you need to keep your skin and hair going while you enjoy salty air, sea and sand! This box is self explained. The morroccan oil will hydrate your hair, the body lotion will make your tan last longer and the face mask will be there to aid any dry dead skin you have obtained from soaking up all the vitamin D. The cleanser I will admit however I wasn’t a massive fan of, it seemed like it didn’t really do its job to the standard I expected it to, it was described as “cleansing foam” but it just didn’t seem to foam up to my expectation, it didn’t really have that feel of “oh I feel so clean and tingly” that other products seem to induce. The mascara was good but it wasn’t the best, I mean it was a good mascara but I didn’t like the wand, that is not a wand that I would have put with that mascara.
Overall I enjoyed the boxbut I am more excited for the next box! The next glossybox is the glossybox birthday edition and there are some amazing products that are probably going to be featured in there because the sneak peak was huda and glossybox really aren’t playing around!
I know this post is quite late and delayed but I have been quite busy lately and I got my box a little later due to going on a little summer vacay, however this post is also late due to a few problems I actually experienced with this box and had to get resolved so this blog post would have been late anyway but I will explain all in this post.
I got my birchbox and I was actually really excited to get this box, the box looked promising for me personally as it was labelled “born unicorn” which is a theme right up my street! However as usual when opening birchbox I discovered that the theme really did not suit the theme of the box, I was expecting maybe it had some eyelashes or face jewels among the content but there was nothing sparkly or magical to make you feel like a pretty little unicorn in this box at all.
Birchbox July
The variation of items in the box was a good variation however as previously stated it wasn’t exactly “what it said on the tin” shall we say? I got a luxie make up brush which is lovely very soft and works eyeshadow very well into the crease of the eyelid, I received a sample of the deep sleep pillow spray which me and my man love because obviously it leaves the bed pillows smelling amazing with its lavender scent and obviously with it being lavender it works well. In my honest opinion though you do only need one spray or the scent can become overwhelming and the. Product is nothing special, you could probably get the same effect from any lavender product and it do the same job as lavender is a remedy for sleep, it’s why it used in over the counter products like “kalms” and the robot soap at lush that is designed for children after bath time on the nightly routine, it serves a purpose.
The complete content of my box, or so I thought.
I also received the percy and reed frizz fixer in full size (SHOCK) which I do like, in a fashion, however it is not the miracle fixer it is made out to be, I decided to try it out after wearing my hair in a bun for most of the day and when I took it out of the bun and tried to “fix my frizz” to wear a ponytail and I found it had the impact of a glorified hairspray. It didn’t fix anything, it just kind of stuck bits of my fix to other parts of frizz and just looked like I’d been out and my hair was limp and sad. I however love the smell of this product so I now have found it a new fabulous use of hair deodorant.
I then looked at the two make up products in the box which was odd because before I started getting these mystery boxes I would have dived straight into the make up products first but I have found myself really loving to play with the more fiddly bits and pieces like the sprays and things to amuse myself. The marcelle mascara is great, I have no complaints about it’s general use, it’s a great product, I will use that but the size was far from generous but that’s birch box for you!
I then stopped in my tracks because I then noticed through the little pink stuffing in the box there was dirt, which I certainly don’t think was an intentional product they include in their boxes, I was kind of horrified because when handling things like make up brushed and products that people are using on their face their is a certain level of hygiene that needs to be obtained and sustained in order for things to not become contaminated. It’s safe to say that at this point I was not really a happy bunny. I asked my man what he thought it was and he said it looks like dirt from being stored in an unclean warehouse.
ew.disappointing.
I then moved onto my other make up product, the floss eye shadow which as you can see was not handled with care, it arrived very broken and I was gutted. floss are a cruelty free brand and I was excited to try this but I haven’t been able to as of yet because I have only just received my replacement along with a new box for my items after waiting days for customer service to pick up my message. I had messaged birch box telling them I really wasn’t happy about what the dirt and broken eye shadow that I had received and that I had cancelled my subscription, WHICH I HAVE BECAUSE OMG THE DIRT. THE DIRT!
To summarise I really don’t think I will ever be activating my subscription again, I don’t think the box is value for money, I’m on my second box, the first box was all samples apart from one item and in this box I was given warehouse dirt and a broken eye shadow. No thank you Birchbox, I think I’ll pass, you’re cancelled.
I have recently joined birchbox, just because I was curious. I had heard mixed things, mainly bad, if I’m being honest so I thought I would check it out because I am open to trying new things and I had heard some good things. Fans of birchbox really will defend this box to the death because it enables their customers to try amazing new product, which is the main point of getting a beauty subscription in the first place but after trying beauty boxes like glossy box, I wonder if they realise they are not really getting the best value for money that they could get and I will explain my opinion as to why.
I subscribed to birchbox in perfect time to get their June box, which looks like this:
Paperchase and Birch box had joined forces to bring you this box and as much as the box is pretty and decorative their wasn’t much else to let you know that paperchase had much to do with this box other than two random vouchers for 20% off that were tucked neatly into the box and this was a little pointless to me, it would have made more sense in my opinion to put a pen in the box, the whole thing was rather lost on me because the box was meant to be a paperchase and Birchbox box and yet paperchase felt so irrelevant.
Moving on from the oddly merged theme and onto the size because when you are getting a box, size really does matter! The box was rather small compared to what I am used to, Glossy box may have moulded me into a minor spoiled brat on my expectation to what I actually expect from a box and as soon as I saw the size I knew I wasn’t going to be getting a lot of full sized items, which I find rather disappointing. The products in the box had me a little confused because they were so small. I stress once again that I have used Glossy box and if you are a customer of Glossy box you are used to getting full sized products, not a box of literal samples. To add to the overwhelming feeling the box was also late and it really was underwhelming considering the wait.
The benefit gimme brow was a small sample, the paul and joe primer was also tiny and the balance me flash cleanse micellar water was also tiny, the coco and eve like a virgin hair mask was also small but seemed like there was enough to pacify the user and the laritzy lip product in plum was the only full sized product going to be in my box had I not been prepared with a code for a free nail product and if it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t of been a very happy bunny, because when you’re in person looking at a small box with tiny products without the nail varnish in, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get much use out of it.
The products featured in the box were not all that interesting to me but I am so thankful for the code I had to get my nails.inc gel effect nail product because that was my favourite item in the box! it’s a stunning shade and I just love it! The benefit brow product I gave to my mother without bothering to try it because it came in the shade of a natural light brown and I like to have my eyebrows a little dark, I have blue and pink hair, when my roots come through they are usually dark, I just thought the product could go to somebody who would actually get some use out of it as well as the paperchase voucher which I am giving away to two of my friends at work to use. The coco and eve product smells great and I am excited to get that hair mask on my head because of the smell andThe Laritzy product, the one full sized product in the box was not really up my street, I like a long lasting liquid lip and this was a lip crayon that slid straight off at the slightest touch, no good for me or my life style, I am a mother of two and my kids are always poking and prodding me, If I wore this I would end up looking like a sad clown. The other products in the box I will use but they don’t seem to be worth mentioning because they will be here today and gone tomorrow because they are so small.
There’s not much else I can say about the box in all honesty, it was just overall disappointing compared to other beauty boxes and I can see why people cancel their subscription, I’ll be keeping mine for another month but if the next box is anything like this one I think it will be my last, the products and their size just aren’t worth the money compared to what you could get from another beauty box and I think birchbox are probably the weakest of the boxes at this point, it didn’t “wow” me like glossy box does and you don’t get as much and where Birchbox are concerned I feel like I am “over it before I got under it” after one box, it just wasn’t great but I did however notice another problem…
Now like most beauty boxes Birchbox comes with a leaflet telling you about the products, what they do, their RRP and on the back you usually get a sneak peak for next month and this is where birchbox really do something different because they allow you to pick one thing that you get in your next box, however this time things didn’t add up. On the back of this leaflet there is a choice of INC.redible sheet masks but if you are a birchbox subscriber you will know that this wasn’t the choice we were given because what we were actually given was a choice of two eye shadows. so I don’t really know what happened here or which we are going to get, I honestly have no idea, I would have liked the sheet mask if I’m honest, I love a good face mask, I would have gone for unicorn.
my final opinion on this box is that it seemed rushed, unorganised and underwhelming. It basically kind of sucked, they couldn’t even get basic information on a leaflet correct and this isn’t a subscription I can see myself keeping but I’ll give it a fair trial and stick around for the next one because my blog may seem a bit “cut throat” where birch box is concerned, especially considering it is my first box, but if a beauty box subscription can’t come up with a decent summer box then I think that says a lot and this box was definitely a flop, but the next box will tell for certain.
Malamai 