Hi guys! It’s time to look at August’s BoxyCharm! There were some really good products in this one and some that I purchased myself from their dropshop, and we’re gonna go over everything.
As I draft this post I’m noticing that the website still has July’s box listed and no info on August, but that’s alright. I’m just hoping I don’t get duplicates of things that I already bought and am trying out.
This is the first BoxyCharm post that I’ve been genuinely excited about, because I found some products that I’ve really enjoyed and discovered a few new brands I hadn’t gotten to try yet. And I’ve been having some good makeup days.
I received five items in my box like normal, mostly cosmetics but one primer. The selection was okay, but I was really irritated with one of the items I received, so we can talk about that too.
The first item I got is the First Aid Beauty Hello FAB Coconut Smoothie Priming Moisturizer. Can I just say, these titles are just getting longer and longer? This sounds like a fifteen year old in the Starbucks line. Stop.
I’ve heard of this brand before but hadn’t ever tried anything, so I was looking forward to this one. The website says it’s best for normal to dry skin, which makes sense because it’s a coconut oil product, and it also claims to be luminizing. I don’t notice any shimmer, so I’m assuming they mean it’ll keep skin looking fresh and moisturized all day, which also makes sense because it claims to be a 2-in-1 moisturizer/primer.
[Edit: I can see the luminizing part, and it’s not nothing; this morning I applied it as a moisturizer, which meant I left it on while I went and got dressed for work. When I got back to my mirror to start my makeup, I noticed that my skin had this really bright sheen. Not like I rubbed highlighter everywhere, but there was a significant shimmer happening. I don’t know why I didn’t notice.]
Anyway, this item comes in a regular squeeze tube packaging that’s very busy and not all that chic looking. The cap screws off, which is nice.
The texture of the product is like a regular primer but more whipped, and it comes out easily. It’s a light nude-pink color and goes on smooth and thick, I feel like you don’t need much. The fragrance is very coconut, but not overwhelming, it just smells refreshing and clean.
Even though I use this product on top of my other morning routine items, it didn’t cause any pilling or conflict, and I actually received several compliments on my base the first time I went out with it on.
This item retails for $32 but is on sale on their site for $16, so this isn’t actually that crazy of an item to get. But I do enjoy it so far, and I’d purchase this with the discount. I do need to try it some more under my other foundations, but so far so good.
The next item I received in my box is the Natasha Denona Cupid Eyeshadow Palette. I now own three of these little baby palettes from this brand, and It’s a warm-toned palette and I had actually hoped not to get it, initially. The first time I saw it, I thought it was just a really unattractive color story. The packaging was very red, and it just made the whole thing look like a pink palette. When I opened the box I was like ughhh I deliberately never ordered or added this to any box because I just didn’t like it.
BUT what I didn’t realize was that the red packaging was washing out what was actually a bronzey palette with one reddish shade, and I was sleeping on a really good color story.
So! I’m here to say they picked a terrible background color for this palette. Unlike the Jeffree Star Blood Sugar Palette, which has a red backdrop because they want it to look very red but which also contains many red shades, this palette has one red shade and a very red backdrop. It looked on the website like a cherry red palette, and awful to be honest.
Now that I’ve swatched them I can see that they’re mostly brown and bronze shades and are actually very usable! Which is amazing because this brand has one of the best formulas on the market as far as blendability and pigmentation.
This palette is no exception; the mattes are buttery and soft, the shimmers are smooth, everything’s great. I love this palette and can’t wait to try out some smokey looks with it.
Next in my box I received the Shadow Moon Reusable Shadow Shield. I mean, sure. Okay fine. Whatever. I guess.
I don’t know what to say about this item. It’s a pink crescent moon made of … silicone? Silicon? Rubber? Something. The kind you can put in the fridge to make it cooling or something? It’s thick on one side and tapers off to become thinner. It’s just a weird thing to receive. It retails for $18, so it’s not like it’s that exciting to get in the box, but maybe it’ll be useful. I could try it with the Natasha palette and see if it’s any good, or I could just sell it on Poshmark for a couple of bucks. Eh. This one wasn’t even fun to write about.
The next item arrived smashed. When I opened it, it spilled all over me and the couch and made a huge stain on a pair of my favorite lounge pants. It’s the OPV Beauty Glow Perfect Face Palette. The highlighter was completely smashed; after opening the plastic, I opened the actual packaging and powder went everywhere. The blush on the far right was also cracked and broken in pieces, and that also got everywhere. The bronzer wasn’t touched.
I’m really irritated because it made a mess everywhere and this is the second time my Boxycharm has arrived with a broken item. Like – how does this happen? I’ve never ever received a broken item in my IPSY that I can remember, and this has happened twice in three months. It’s irritating.
I honestly don’t remember much about the product or the packaging because I’m just throwing it away. It’s useless and awful and maybe if I can get a replacement I’ll try it out. In the meantime I need to deal with customer service again. This is really inconvenient because I already have so much to do without worrying about broken items.
So unfortunately I don’t have a review on this item, just my thoughts on it being broken. Since it won’t bring me any joy to try out and I can’t use the item fully, I won’t be touching it for now. I sent BoxyCharm an e-mail so hopefully I can get a replacement and a real review for next time.
[Edit: I contacted Boxy and they have confirmed that they’ll be sending me a replacement of this item, so I may just add it to next month’s reviews which will be a pain since next month I’m getting my Mega Drop Shop and that’s going to literally take three months to complete. But I can do it.
The last item in the main box is the KAB Cosmetics Loose Setting Powder. I’ll be honest, I don’t use a lot of setting powders anymore. I’ve really become accustomed to the dewy look, and have never really minded being a little shiny.
The packaging for this powder is alright, but the sticker on top of the opening was stuck on so strong that the actual packaging almost gave way before it did. I had to pull so hard the jar almost came apart.
Then, there’s the issue of no twist-top to prevent the powder from getting everywhere. It’s just a jar with a mesh on top, but nothing to keep everything in if it tips over. The jar is also so small that my powder brush can’t swirl much in the lid, so it did go on a little patchy.
The powder itself is decent, it’s not translucent, and did an excellent job setting my undereyes. It’s not something I’ll probably use much, since like I said, I aim for the dewy look. But it’ll be nice to have a powder on hand that’s compact and doesn’t take up much room in my vanity.
That wraps up the base box. I added several items to my box this month so I’ll go over those as well because a few of them were huge successes.
I purchased the Kenia Ontiveros Beauty Blush and Shine Kit, which came in a really luxurious package. It’s white and heavy and has a leathery texture and print on it. Honestly, it’s gorgeous.
The formulas seem okay – the mattes swatched really well as you can see in this photo, and the shimmers also swatched pretty good – except you can see in the photo that the two shimmer bronze colors are almost indistinguishable from each other.
I added this on to my box for $8, and it retails for $42. This seems like a pretty good deal to me, even if I only use a couple of colors.
I’m not super thrilled about some of the colors though. The very light color on the top left is super pretty like a light pink highlight, and I like this rosey blush, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with anything in the middle or the right. The two matte bronzes are very orange and red and probably too deep for my skin tone, and I rarely use sparkling bronzers as they’re (imo) counterintuitive. The highlighter though is very good, I’ve been using it on my nose and browbone.
I did try the more matte bronzer out a few days ago and found that while it did make me a little orange, I actually liked how it blended. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the dark reddish brown. It might look good in my crease, but I can’t imagine getting quite that tan honestly.
The next product is the Aesthetica Cream Contour Kit. It retails for $40 and I added it onto my box for $12. I haven’t had a great experience so far with this kit, but it’s the first cream contour kit I’ve ever had so I know it’s going to take some practice. The packaging is nice and heavy and feels like a professional palette, and it came with a booklet outlining the different face shapes and what you’re supposed to do with them to achieve a better look. I appreciated this, because it’s true that contouring is an attempt to make your face look more like another face shape, and it’s better to be direct about what you want than beat around the bush.
The first thing I noticed was that the darker shades are very warm. I always imagined a contour kit to have cool tones, because it’s not a bronzer kit, but they’re very orange brown. The darkest shade is like chocolate, and the two other dark shades are just not gray enough.
I was excited to finally have a contour kit but now I could just achieve this with bronzer.
The lighter shades are alright and it’s obvious that there is one peachy, one yellow, and one more neutral, which I appreciate. They’re all the same “shade” if that makes sense, just with different undertones.
I have been experimenting with the darker shades according to the little pamphlet that came with the kit, and I’m seeing some success, but again, the colors come out on me like bronzers. The lighter shades I’ve been applying as concealers and brighteners on my undereye, nose, and forehead, but they’re very very heavy and I’m not familiar with these kinds of formulas.
The next thing I need to try is the technique where you brighten and contour before foundation. Yikes. I have no experience at all with that but I’d love to try it. I’ve seen YouTubers do it so maybe I can.
Unfortunately the formula is so heavy that it didn’t swatch very well at all and I couldn’t get a good picture, but you can see everything I was talking about from the photo I did post here. Again, if you look at it, it’s very orange. I just am not sure how that constitutes a contour kit, it should be called a cream bronzer kit maybe? If it just had one cool tone it could maybe be a contour kit, but honestly I don’t see that.
[Edit: I’ve been playing around more with these colors and have really enjoyed them as cream bronzers, even the darkest color. I’ve been going in with a dense brush using the tan shades, blending out over my foundation with my foundation brush, and then did one little amount of the deepest shade right below my temple to make it deepen as it went back to my hairline. Then I use a tiny bit on my nose and a little on my forehead. I’ve actually really liked it, even though I still say that it’s not really a contour kit, more like a highlight and bronze kit.
Another update is that the lighter shades are far too heavy to use as concealer on the undereye, although they’re very nice on the chin and nose and forehead.]
The next product I’m trying out is the LYS Beauty Secure Skin Gripping Serum Primer. This product embraces its title; it’s the texture of a serum but grips like a primer. It’s actually a fascinating product and I’ve enjoyed using it.
The packaging is really cute; it’s a rectangular unit carton with little triangles all over it and the actual bottle is a triangle too which is kinda unique. The cap is a screw-off cap like a rose gold. It’s actually really pretty.
It’s a very lightweight, almost watery texture, but when it applies you can feel it sort of dry down and not exactly harden but turn tacky like it’s supposed to. It’s also completely clear and very liquid, you can easily pour yourself too much. I tried it underneath several of my foundations and it works very well to preserve my makeup. My products go on overtop of it nicely and it so far has not pilled up. And I use quite a bit because it feels so nice to put on, the formula feels refreshing and cool and not heavy.
I purchased this product for $9 and it retails for $20. This isn’t the best deal in the box, but an entire bottle of primer for only nine dollars sounded good to me. I’m just glad I liked it.
I’ll probably purchase it again if it comes up as a possible add-on, to be honest. It’s so gripping. Great addition to my box.
This next one I’m so excited to talk to you about! This is the Fenty Beauty Fat Water Niacinamide Por-Refining Toner Serum. I owned the travel size of this set right when Rihanna dropped the collection and was absolutely obsessed with everything about it, but it was so expensive and I had worse picking problems at the time and just couldn’t justify spending that much money to care for a face that I was routinely picking to shreds.
But these days my face has been so much better, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve been considering purchasing some better skincare and investing in it.
You’ve gotta understand, imagine you personally bite your nails to the point where they’re bleeding on a daily basis, and they’re scabbed and scarred and red and blistery and then you try to paint them with beautiful nail polish. And you’re just like… ew.
That’s how it is with my face sometimes, or it used to be, back when I picked daily. My face was peeling and dry and blotchy basically at all times, and this made me need to touch it more. It was an awful, toxic cycle. Putting makeup over it just felt wrong.
Anyway, that’s why I never bought this skincare line even though I loved it and now I get to explain why I love this particular product.
The packaging is genius. You can open, pour, and close with one hand because of the twist top, the bottle has so much product in it, the lavender color with the reddish serum is such a bomb combination, and the fragrance took my breath away. It’s like all the different nice smells in the world all together in one sweet fragrance.
The toner/serum itself is a really nice texture – not super slippery like a hyaluronic acid serum, just nice and lightweight. It absorbs really quickly and mixes with my other skincare very well and so far I haven’t noticed any issues.
I will say that when you order the very small bottles of these, the travel sizes, they’re a little harder to get product out of.
Even though the entire collection wasn’t in my bag, I can also give a little bit of a mini review on the face wash and moisturizer. I really enjoyed the face wash as it had a similarly intoxicating fragrance, but it was a foamy wash and did leave my skin feeling slightly dry. The moisturizer was very nice and because of the SPF did feel a little heavier than the stuff I tend to go for. The packaging for all these is also very pretty just like the toner serum.
The last items I added on to my box this month were two of the Complex Culture Pout Clout Nourishing Lipsticks in the shades Issa Flex and Owns It. These lipsticks have blown me away and I’m so pumped to talk about them.
First off y’all know the packaging this brand uses is out of this world. It’s luxurious, weighted, simplistic, and almost futuristic. These lipsticks come in a rectangle bullet that’s magnetized with a very weak magnet, so it isn’t hard to open but it snaps back together pretty quickly when you’re done.
The formula is slippery but it’s honestly so long-wearing – well, maybe that’s the wrong way to put it. It’ll rub off on things no doubt, but it almost stains the lips. Like, the two swatches in this photo, especially the darker one, lasted several days on my hand and that’s after several showers and doing the dishes. The only thing is, that darker reddish color is actually more purple, but for some reason it looks like berry red when swatched. Unsure about that.
They’re buttery and very soft and the colors I chose look amazing on me. The purple is a little out of my comfort zone but overall they’re dope and I look forward to trying them out with some darker lip liners.
I also find that they lend themselves really well to overlining – I went up past my upper lip with the purple the other day and instead of lopsided like I usually get, it’s actually a cute look and I was super proud of myself. I think it’s because they’re so slippery that they didn’t catch on my lips and made a straighter line than more tough, grainy formulas. Like, they’re sooooo slippery that I only have to draw the line once because plenty of product comes off.
And that’s that! Those are the products I added-on to my BoxyCharm this month and I’m really happy with them overall. Not so much the two palettes, although I’m working with those to see if I can learn them, but the Fenty, the Complex Culture, and the LYS were super good purchases.
We’re also coming up on my first Mega Drop Shop! So next month’s post should be pretty big and broken up because I’m thinking I’ll take the opportunity to buy some extras for this month and experience the Mega.
I’m back from the Mega Drop Shop! I just bought a ton of new products to try out. Super exciting.
Thanks for stopping by and reading through this post! I’m really enjoying trying out all this new stuff and learning more about products. Maybe I’ve been ordering too much, so I’ve been thinking when I get duplicates or things that don’t interest me anymore, I’ll just do giveaways on my Insta😉
I’ll see you guys in the next one!
Dani