Birchbox April 2014

Beauty box time! I've been toying around with Love me beauty box lately, if any of you have had it, let me know how it is! 

This month was the 'good enough to eat' box.

This is the boxes contents this month, not a bad haul really! 

I have an obsession with lip colouring at the moment, so this one was a definite yes for me! It's so cute as well, I love the vintage country vibe of it. I got the apple 'pie' flavour and it's a perfect shade for my lips. Just dark enough to show but light enough to not make my face look as pale as some reds can. It's pretty long lasting too!

This was the actual part of the 'Good Enough to Eat' box that you could in fact eat! The spoilers showed a vanilla and coconut flavour, but most people were receiving fiery Worcestershire sauce flavour, so I'm not going to complain. These were my snack last week whilst watching Dexter (no spoilers, I'm only on season 3!) and were pretty yummy! At 39 calories a bag, you can't go wrong either.

Another foodie type product we received was the Yes to cucumber soothing facial towelletes. We received the travel sized pack, which is ten wipes. They're pretty nice, quite wet, which I find a good thing. Sometimes I get wipes that are so dry, they don't work at all! They get make up off quite well too, and they're great for sensitive skin.

Ahhhhh!!!! More body lotion!! I'm sick of it. If you like body lotion, this Laura Mercier bottle would be a great gift, it smelled lovely and had a real creamy texture that makes your skin very soft. I didn't use it more than the once, and ended up giving it to my nan at the weekend, along with the rest of my body lotion hoard I do not use.

We got to choose this product! There was a choice of four, and I do wish I'd gone for the green, but this ones pretty nice for a metallic nude colour. My only problem was that mine wasn't done up tight enough and had leaked all down the bottle when I opened it, but still. 

I also got another pencil eyeliner, which I probably won't use all too often as pencil liners tend to make me feel like I've gotten stuff in my eyes, plus they don't last long for me. 

Overall, I'm pleased with the box, except for the leaky varnish and the body lotion. Other people got stuff like shampoo, so I'd have preferred that, but hey ho, what you gonna do. I'll stick with Birchbox for now, but only if I stop getting body lotions!! 

xo. 

Glossybox January review

It's that time again folks! The monthly Glossybox review is here and it's not a good one. I shall try not to rant, but it's a bit inevitable at this point. 

So they've 'revamped' the Glossybox! I don't like it.. Yes it is more 'Glossy' but I personally preferred the matte effect to the box, gave it more of a sophisticated feel. Also, they've made the lid deeper giving the impression you're going to get more in the box, although that's not really the case. There was a lot less of the silly tissue paper than usual but the products also were a lot less in quality if you ask me.

First up is the Anatomicals 'Puffy the eye bag slayer wake-up under eye patches'. That's a mouthful for a product name! Quick and catchy definitely isn't the anatomicals way. The full price is £6.99 for 3 pairs at Asos.com. We got two pairs in our pack, why they didn't just give us the full size pack I don't know but there you go. They apparently reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles and all that usual stuff under eye products promise to do. They feel pretty weird to be honest, and be careful when you take them out as I put mine on in the bath and one fell out and stuck to the side of it. 

I can't quite say it made me less wrinkly, as I don't have wrinkles, (yet!) but it made my eyes feel more awake.

This is the Yu-be moisturising skin cream, which according to the tube can also be used for dry lips. It doesn't smell which is quite good, and did make my lips a tad smoother. It's £13.50 for the full 33g tube and I think the ones we got were 3g each. I've only used it the once, so I don't have much more to say on it, although I have heard you can get these exact samples for free on their website, which if true, I'm definitely not impressed with Glossybox.

The first make up we've actually received in ages from Glossybox! It's the beautyuk cc cream with spf 30. I'd say this is my favourite item of the box, because it's actually my shade (10 natural) and it does just as good a job as my Maybelline foundation! It's £4.99 for the 25ml which is what I got in the box. I'd most likely buy this again, although I'm still not sure what the big deal on these CC and BB creams are..

Oh look, more skincare! Seriously Glossybox, you are a BEAUTY box, give us some more make up! This is the Balance Me super toning body wash, retailing at £10.25 for the full 250ml. It can be used as a body wash or added to your bath for an 'all over luxurious soak'. Again I've only used it once, and it was okay. It has a really nice smell, but it smells like something my nan would be using!

Not my favourite.

And the star product of the 'back to basics' box was a pair of tweezers from The Vintage Cosmetic Company. Yes, I pay £13 a month for this box and they gave me tweezers. Yes they're worth £8 and they look pretty and I adore anything vintage, but I don't use tweezers! So that's another wasted product. 

All in all, this box was an utter disappointment. Yes I like the CC cream, but it's £4.99, and I paid (well I used my glossy dots so I got it free but that's not the point) £13 for the box, and it's the only thing I would actually buy in there! After receiving this box, like many other blogs I've read out there, I promptly cancelled my subscription. I gave them a chance, I gave them 5 months of chances and over £50 and each month it got worse. If they spent less time and resources on changing their box and writing the magazine and more on the contents, maybe they'd be better, but for now I'm not going to continue. But not to fear, I'll still get my beauty box fix as I've moved on over to Birchbox. Let's hope it's better and I get more make up! Review to come soon as it's arrived :)

How did you find this month's box?

xo.

This month's beauty freebies!

I love this time of year with magazines. They're always giving away stuff you'll actually use during this party season! I saw a blog post (can't remember which blog I read so many!) talking about this month's magazine freebies so I thought I'd give you a sneak peek at this month's GLAMOUR and Cosmopolitan magazines! 

Here's this month's contents and covers! First of all lets do the GLAMOUR magazine. Free with this issue was one of four full sized nail varnishes by Kate Spade @ Nails inc. I've never really tried any of Nails inc.'s products and I was pleasantly surprised!

I only picked up the gold, I can never justify buying four of the same magazine so it irritates me when they always say 'Collect all four!' This gold is called 'Uptown Glamour' and is actually pretty good. I never buy gold nail varnishes, don't know why, they always remind me of my Nan (which I was right about as she did steal a bit when I was at her house last!) but I loved this one. It's a very subtle metallic gold, almost silver in some lights but I think with the classic Little Black Dress, it would go perfectly to add a bit of colour. And it dries in about 30 seconds which is always good! The shades aren't actually available to buy in stores (I've been hunting for them and no luck just yet so if you find them let me know!) but the Nails Inc. bottles are usually £11 or £12 each. The other shades in the magazine were Soho Silver, New York Noir and Big Apple Red.

That was the only real freebie in Glamour's issue this month, that and a gift guide for Debenhams which actually had some good deals in!

Onto Cosmo.. 

Again another nail polish! I'm particularly fond of this one as I love red nails at the moment, especially with my now black hair - I feel like snow white being all pale with red lips and nails all the time!

This is half the size of a normal bottle; only 5ml, but hey unless we really really love the polish how often do we get to the bottom? Like Glamour, they were giving away 4 different colours, this one is called 'star spangled' (which I love the name of), a sparkly gold, a nude and a more berry almost black colour (which there weren't any left of when I bought mine!). This is actually only one coat of the polish, but I've seen on other reviews of it that it goes almost the same colour as it looks in the bottle which is always something that's appreciated. I love the sparkliness (is that a word?) of this red, it twinkles as it catches the light :). You can actually buy it this size for $3.99 so it's quite cheap really. I definitely think this one is one I'll be using again and again throughout Winter.

Also in Cosmo were two perfume samples. I apologise profusely for the awful photographs here, my camera has seemed to have a fit of late and the adverts were on those stupid shiny pages so they pictures look blurred :(. Even so, the first is 'Angel' by Thierry Mugler and I know it's been out quite a while but this is actually the first time I've smelt it! When I first put it on I wasn't a fan at all as it's quite a spicy sort of smell, but after a while it settles and it's quite nice. I don't know if I'd necessarily buy it, but it is nice. The second sample was the Katy Perry Killer Queen fragrance. I did receive this in my latest Glossybox and I wasn't a fan, and I still am not. It's just not something my nose seems to like! 

I also got a sample of the Aveeno body moisturising cream. This is another of those supposed 24 hour lasting moisturisers. I've yet to use it, but if I like it I'm sure I'll be buying it soon as I've been on the lookout for a good body moisturiser and they aren't too expensive in Boots :)

Cosmo included a Gift guide for him and her as well as the actual magazine, which was 25 pages of gift ideas for both men and women. I may be doing a gift guide in the near future so keep your eyes peeled!

One more quick note, I've been thinking lately about starting up a YouTube channel, for stuff like hauls and my daily routine and maybe some tutorials like the enrapture rollers etc. If you'd like to see this leave a comment below, and maybe give me some ideas of what else you'd like to see! 

XO.