I loved the box design itself this month. It reminded me so much of home and my heart did swell just a little bit seeing the sunset and palm trees. Up to this point I didn't really realize I was homesick.
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| Homesick |
The Dr. Jart+ Ceramidin Cream is the second Dr. Jart+ product I've received and so far they're not really scoring many points with me. This moisturizer is a fairly thick cream that is full of ceramides, waxy fatty acids that help the skin maintain moisture and is also a component of vernix caeseosa (or baby cheese) on newborn babies. Cool beans, I can respect that. Except I have combination leaning toward oily skin so... no dice. Unfortunately this cream is just a bit too thick and tacky for my taste but I imagine it would work wonders on somebody with normal or dry skin. My biggest hangup is that it has that thicker tacky consistency after application which drives me insane (yeah, I know it's probably more mental than anything) so it's definitely an evening cream for me.
I received another perfume this month called Like This. It is a collaboration between the brand by Etat Libre d'Orange and Tilda Swinton, whom I've had a total girl crush on since Constantine. This fragrance has a very deep, woodsy, musky, almost gourmand scent to it. I'm not sure if what I'm smelling is gourmand or floral though because the scent tends to evolve on me rapidly for the first 10 minutes then gradually over the next few hours. It definitely has a deep autumn scent to it (love!). The info card describes it as having notes of ginger, rose and pumpkin. Omg I just want to roll in a pile of leaves with every sniff.
I received Glamglow Thirsty Mud H this month! Please excuse my excitement but teeny samples by this brand were part of the reason I had subscribed to Play! by Sephora so I was too excited to receive this tiny sample in my Birchbox instead of say, another dry shampoo. This is a wash-off mud mask that you apply to a damp face and leave on for roughly 20 minutes. It contains hylauronic acid, raw honey and ginger and smells amazing. I applied this before bed and my skin felt calm and refreshed and moisturized without that tacky post-moisturizer feeling I get. It did take quite a while to wash off though so if that's a point of annoyance this mask might not be for you.
For the love of fuck I wish Birchbox would either take my skin tone into consideration or just stop sending me colored lip products entirely. I had been eyeballing Stila Stay All Day Liquid Lipsticks for a while on Hautelook while never biting the bullet and buying one. I got the shade Perla, a rosey "nude" shade. My husband worded it best: "I imagine a manatee floating dead, absorbing all that water. Turning sort of sickly purple/gray with hints of what used to be pink. That's what your lips look like in that color." Mind you, this is after I attempted to fix the color with a nude toned NYX lip liner in the shade Coffee. It smells the way fondant tastes. It applies a bit patchy on my lips and requires at least two coats. The downside to this is that after the second coat the lipstick begins to pearl (no pun intended) a bit on itself. It has a very offputting fragrance that smells almost exactly what cake fondant tastes like and has a bit of a sweet flavor to it as well. The formula is not transfer proof and it dries to leave a powdery finish on my lips. Overall this product was a resounding no with me but I wonder if I would have given it a higher rating if I were able to at least wear it for an extended period of time.
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| Stila Perla swatched in very shitty lighting |
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| Left: Stila Stay All Day in Perla alone, Right: Stila Stay All day on top of NYX lip pencil in coffee |
Too cool that I got two bonus foil packets this month. It feels like that has been happening more frequently, actually. This month's foil bonuses were Oribe Shampoo and Conditioner for Brilliance And Shine. I'll be honest, I didn't get a chance to use these yet because my box came in after weekly wash day. Please somebody explain to me though why the full size of the shampoo and conditioner are $49 and $52 respectively? Is it the brand we're supposed to be paying for or are these comprised of some form of infant tears and unicorn farts? I would also love to meet the people who are willing to shell out that kind of money for a shampoo and conditioner because I will take that opportunity to ask him or her to buy me a latte.
Am I happy? Yes and no. I could absolutely do without shipping delays and poorly matching shades. I hate the liquid lipstick shade (as I often do because I highly doubt they take my profile's skin tone into consideration) but I did get Glam Glow, Oribe foil packets, a questionably nice smelling perfume and Benefit Gimme Brow (score!). I accidentally ended up with two boxes this month. I had sent an email around August 21st saying I never received my box and my shipping hadn't updated since the original notice on August 9th so they apologized to me and sent a replacement box. My original "lost" box arrived 4 days ago while my replacement box just showed up in the mail today. Oops. My one comfort is that I'm not the only person who has had shipping issues and concerns. I've also been toeing the line about whether or not I wanted to cancel but I believe this shipping issue is the last straw. My subscription is up for renewal in December but I think I feel more comfortable moving to a monthly plan from my current annual subscription. Shipping delays and vendor changes make me pretty nervous.
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