Hi everyone! It’s time to talk about the BoxyCharm for October! I usually look forward to choice day with so much apprehension, but this month I almost forgot about it. I was at my desk at work and remembered, at 12:48, that it was the 1st of the month, and it was time to GOOOOO.
I don’t love the spooky season. The only thing I liked about October as a kid was the Reese’s at the end. I did not like dressing up or talking to strangers around the neighborhood, and I did not like the decorations at school or the pranks or TPs and things like that. I didn’t like carving pumpkins. October is my least favorite time of year.
So let’s get started!
Seraphine Botanicals
This brand rings a bell, but I don’t think I’ve tried much from them. I’m pretty sure the last item I tried was a cream blush palette, which I actually did like. This item is a highlighter, and it’s in a similar packaging, white with lettering.
They don’t appear to have a website that you can purchase from, but it’s on Cult Beauty and Amazon – that doesn’t really scream “power pick” to me though. You want a brand that at least has a website. [Strike that, if you literally type www.seraphine-botanicals.com into the browser, it does come up with a website. But that website won’t come up on Google results which is usually how I look up my pricing].
The first thing I’m noticing about this Diamantine Highlighter, is they used the image from the shade Moonlit, and that this shade, Oyster, is much deeper. This is very unlikely to look good on my skin tone and when I saw it on the website, I was debating whether I would even try this product. Moonlit is a golden taupe shade, where Oyster is a deeper, cooler tone.
It’s disappointing that at this point, I think it’s intentional. They couldn’t get their hands on a shade that would actually work, and I think they’re just using the image and hoping no one notices.
Shame on them.
The highlighter retails for $29, and I’m not going to be trying it, I’ll be gifting it to someone at my work whose skin tone is better suited for it.
Innisfree
This is a brand I’ve recently fallen in love with from their green tea seed face cream, and I’m thrilled to try something else, and that IPSY would pick this brand for my power pick. This new item is the Daily Defense UV Sunscreen. This is an odd choice for an October box, and it’s also not clear if it’s face or bodycare. [Edit: After tapping into the description, it says to use as the last step in your skincare routine, so I guess it’s for the face.]
The packaging is completely different from the tub moisturizers I have, but I actually like that because it’s more similar to sunscreen packaging anyway. The bottle is a thin oval with a twist off cap, just like the BareMinerals overnight mask that I’ve been using but a little shorter and wider. It’s very easy to twist open and close. The opening for the formula is small, which I also like for this because you usually don’t need as much as you think you do with moisturizers like this, and many people may even use this ontop of their other creams, so need even less.
The formula is very smooth and much firmer than the Green Tea Seed cream that I also use from them. It’s got shea butter vibes. The website says it contains green tea, sunflower seed oil, and cica, whatever that is. [I looked it up – it’s tigergrass, a plant common in Asia, and it’s used for soothing irritated and burned skin. I think that’s pretty good for a sunscreen.]
It’s a good reminder that you should be using sunscreen even through the winter… But I don’t really use sunscreens and my quiz says I’d prefer not to receive them, so why it’s a power pick item is unclear. But I love their other face cream, so why not try another?
The cream has two sizes on the website here, 50ml and 100ml, which cost $18 and $32 respectively. I wouldn’t probably pay that much for this specific cream, but if it shows up in Mega Drop or something like that I’d probably get it.
Tarte
Ah, welcome back Tarte. It’s been a while. This is their Blush Tape Liquid Blush in the shade – wait for it – pink.
I wasn’t exactly part of the Shape Tape cult, although I did buy it at one point and use it regularly. So Blush Tape? Sounds fun. It comes in a lip-gloss-like squeeze tube, with a cap, except instead of a hole for product to come out, it looks like you’re supposed to squeeze the product into the little mini beauty-blender-like thing at the end and dot it on before blending. It’s exciting to try this style out because I have never had a product that does that dot thing.
So the packaging is completely unique. It has a cap that pops off, and underneath it has the little puff ball, which is attached to the bottle by a section that twists to open and close. So at first, I tried to squeeze it out, but nothing happened, and then I noticed the twist thing. Kind of like how Fat Water has that twist cap to dispense the product.
Once I had it open and squeezed, a lot of air came out. Like, the bottle was very full of air and product. I had to squeeze until it was at least 1/3 “empty” before the little puff started to fill up. But once it did, I could immediately tell it was going to be amazing. The color immediately struck me as the perfect pink, but it looked even better when I dotted it onto my face. Even before I blended it I was saying “wow” to myself.
I put three dots above my bronzer where I typically blush, and then blended out with my fingertips. It does have a slight shimmer to it, but nowhere near the glimmery blushes I’ve tried from Iconic London or Danessa Myricks. This is subtle and pretty. It blended out and had the perfect amount of pigment, not hard to blend, but definitely shows up.
This blush retails for $36, which is a ton of money for 12ml of product. That’s $3 per mil of product. I get that the custom packaging was probably pretty expensive, but this is still a little crazy. I wouldn’t spend this much on a blush, although I would love to try this in other shades and will absolutely select it
Kevyn Aucoin
Ever since I tried my first product from this brand, I have wanted to be able to add more to my IPSY. This October, the brand finally reappeared! I added the Unforgettable Lipstick Cream in the shade Thelmadora. The packaging for this item is beautiful, it’s going along with the current trend of lipsticks in these long-handled, thinner compacts instead of bullets. The shade is sort of that lipstick shade that all our grandmothers hand, not too nude, not too purple, not too bright, not too dusty pink. “Your Lips But Better” type of shade.
I don’t know if it’s just the color of my lips, or the fact that I used a lip liner, but this did not turn out how I expected on my lips. It looks like such a gorgeous pinky nude shade, but on my lips it came out almost brown? I was using a brown lip liner so I understand it a little, but I feel like it completely took on the color of the liner. I’m going to try again tomorrow with nothing on my lips, and use a lip mask tonight to make sure they’re smooth. But the first go wasn’t it.
[Edit: I was able to try this a few more times without the lip liner and had a much better experience. The shade is a little more pink and a little less nude than I expected, but I liked how it looked on me. I don’t typically wear lipsticks but I’m going to continue trying with this one.]
These retail for $32, which is an exorbitant amount for a lipstick, no matter how unforgettable it is. I would certainly not purchase for that amount, although I’d buy more shades if they pop up in IPSY’s choice for other boxes. I’d like to see maybe a more nude shade. Pink is alright but it’s not exactly October.
Frank Body
This brand, I’m on the fence about. I tried a couple of the scrubs, the coffee one and the sparkly one, from a few years ago and they were a little disappointing, and hard to wash off and out of the shower. It felt like sand in there for days. I guess it’s the type of scrub you want to use while you’re already at the beach. I don’t know. Anyway, this is their Smoothing AHA Body Lotion, which I’m assuming would go very well with the scrubs.
The packaging is not at all what I associate with their brand from using those scrubs so much, it’s a traditional-looking moisturizer. Nothing that fun at all honestly. Right off the bat, I notice that when I look up this product, the images online look nothing like the images that IPSY has on their site. This suggests that the reason they were able to get their hands on the product is the packaging is changing.
It’s a thick formula; even though I exfoliated beforehand, it took forever to sink in. I had also just shaved so it did sting but that’s a me problem. I wouldn’t use this in the future; if I need a body moisturizer, I’d more likely get a body butter from The Body Shop.
This item retails for $19.99, although that’s just on Amazon. I can’t find the product on their actual website. Although once again, if you just type frankbody.com into the google bar, you can find the product for $22 on their site. It makes sense that they’d sell for a little bit less on Amazon, since I believe Amazon handles more of the logistics.
Fresh
One of my biggest staples in skincare is from this brand – the Fresh Lotus Youth Preserve Moisturizer. I love adding these onto my boxes, especially ICON boxes. This October, I branched out and added on their Black Tea Firming Peptides Serum. The packaging is very on-brand, and the ingredients look excellent (I saw Camellia, Jojoba, etc).
The packaging is a little different from other serums and a little hard to explain, to be honest. It has a dropper-like bottle, but instead of a dropper it’s got a long, hummingbird-like stem at the top where the dropper would be? Then there’s a cap that twists off, but it’s tiny, it’s almost like a toothpaste cap. Then between the cap and the bottle there’s a small piece of the stem that is translucent, like made of a different material. There’s a little sign on the innerside of the packaging that indicates to squeeze the small translucent piece to dispense the product – and what do you know, it works.
Why it’s so overengineered is a complete mystery to me, except that maybe by having to manually drop each drop they’re hoping we don’t run through too much product at a time? My only other thought is that it could have ingredients you need to go easy with. From looking at their website, I think they’re marketing it as one of those instant-firming creams, and I’ll be honest, it does feel and act like one. They say it contains peptides for elasticity and density, as well as black tea and honeysuckle for the same purposes.
This serum retails for 110 freaking dollars, and even has a larger size that costs $165. The size I got is the 50ml. I know serums are the ones packed with the good stuff, but man, this is going to have to really wow me for that amount if I’m ever going to get it again.
Byroe!
I love that these were part of choice! This is Byroe’s English Breakfast Tea Treatment Essence. Remember this guy? It comes in a bottle separated, you shake and use, and then it separates again! I have missed it so much since it ran out, so I added two bottles to this October box. I can finally use it again and maybe share with my sister.
I know I talked about it a lot in that previous post, but I can’t help it. I think this must be one of the best products I’ve ever tried. From gorgeous packaging to innovative formula to beautiful marketing to – well, I can’t say it has a low price. It do not. It costs $84. I can’t even afford this when buying on Poshmark for $40. But it was available as an add on, for $18!
It’s the definition of elevated. I highly recommend it.
Girlactik
The only product I’d tried from this brand was a pretty bad face scrub, so I wasn’t hopeful about this one. This is their Rose Petal Dewy Face Mist, which comes in an absolutely adorable millennial pink spray bottle. I don’t use a lot of face mists, except sometimes to apply powder products with – like the Jeffrey Star highlighter I’m using right now, I’ll get a load of it on the brush but then I’ll spray over top of it with face mist before applying. I rarely use face mist as intended.
So the packaging is very cute. The product swirls and shimmers, and then the bottle also has these little pink petal-looking things in there as well that swirl around if you shake it. I decided to try it out first with an eyeshadow that I wanted to do on my inner corner, so I got plenty of product on the little angled brush, sprayed the face mist, and applied. It worked like a treat, it was honestly perfect. The yellow shadow applied with awesome pigmentation and actually stood out on my skin, which yellow never does. I liked it so much I also sprayed it over top of my full face when I was done.
The fragrance is definitely rose, though, which isn’t my favorite.
I did love how it performed as a last step in my skincare routine and before my makeup. It adds this pearly glow to my skin that my foundation goes over top of.
It comes in two sizes, 60ml and 100ml, and they cost $28 and $34 respectively. This one is the 100ml. $28-$34 is a lot of money for a face spray, but it does contain things such as rosewater, pearl extract, and hyaluronic acid, which sound pretty luxurious to me.
Fenty
How have I never tried the Cheeks Out Cream Blushes from Fenty? This is the shade Peach Face which I think is an adorable shade name. The packaging is iconic Fenty, in the white hexagon compact – Hexagons are the Bestagons – and the shade is definitely a peachy coral vibe.
I typically would apply this type of product with a damp beauty blender – like, apply foundation with the angled side and then apply the blush with the rounded end. But I don’t have any beauty blenders right now, so I’ve been using a brush to apply. I don’t like the effect as much but it is what it is, I don’t even use blush that often.
It isn’t as heavy-hitting as I expected for a Fenty product, to be honest. The brush application really didn’t do much that I could see, so tomorrow I’m going to try to apply with my fingertips and warm the product up more, because I almost think it could be that the house is very cold and it just isn’t transferring to the brush.
These cream blushes retail for $26, and the shade range is crazy, but they are all pretty. I think if I were a blush person I’d buy these at their price, or maybe wait until the Fenty Fam Sale.
So, what do we think? Was October’s box spooky enough? Eh, I mean I definitely didn’t get as many products as I usually do, so there weren’t as many opportunities as usual to get scary. I really like the moisturizer and serums and skincare – the blushes, I’m still trying to figure out. I don’t really like blushes or use them typically although this Tarte one, I just might.
I’m excited to see what ICON looks like now that October is over and we’re coming up on November! I saw the spoilers, they looked interesting, although everyone on the reddit says it’s a skip. I guess we’ll see!
Thanks,
Dani
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