Julep February 2015 Unboxing

So, I was originally planning to skip this box. I wanted the free Heartleigh, but wasn't into any of the other colors so I figured I would just swap for it. However, I like a complete idiot missed the secondary "yes I want to skip the month" button and thus got billed and had a box shipped to me and customer service can't help me because I have no email confirmation because technically I didn't skip the month.

What that means for the blog though is that I am reviewing the actual uncustomized box they gave me based on my personality profile. For the record, as stated before, Julep has a completely customizeable box system  I usually end up swapping out multiple items to make a box I'm really excited about getting, I just wasn't that excited about the polish colors this month so I figured I would skip it since I technically need nothing.

This month's theme was afterglow, and I think if I had gone ahead with customizing my box I would have gotten the fan brush or another one of their lip conditioning treatments.




I wasn't all that into the tissue paper that month, not that it is a particularly important thing, I just figured I would comment since I have been in love with the tissue paper other months.

 Here is the box upon initial opening. I ended up with two full size beauty products, one nail polish, and a polish freebie which technically I think isn't possible based on their options. Regardless, lots of products made me feel better about spending 24$ on a box I hadn't planned on getting.

 The first thing I got was a lipgloss in the color lively. It looks like a red in the bottle. If you have been around for a while, you might know I hate lip gloss.

 So, I went ahead and swatched it on my hand and it's a lot sheerer than I was expecting. It's sticky, just like your traditional lip gloss, there is nothing I can say is special about it. There is nothing that would make this worth spending the 16$ (Maven price, it's $20 if you aren't subscribed to the box) from an objective point of view.

 This is London, it is the polish color I got this month. Now, I don't wear purple very often, but I did want to keep one around in case I wanted to do nail art or a themed manicure that needed it, which is why I kept last month's purple actually. So, I did comparison nail swatches and actually ended up choosing this one over last month's purple.

 Here is a very messy nail swatch. This is only one coat, no base coat. It's a nice lavender color. Julep's creams have the same fast surface dry time as all their other polishes, but are very susceptible to smudging for quite a while afterwards and can have a very thick texture if you don't work fast. However, I enjoy the opacity of them enough to deal with the long dry time.






Next, I got a champagne highlighter. I have plenty of highlighters in every color known to man, I don't use them very often and this one is huge but it was still incredibly fun to play with.

The box is pretty, the packaging feels very heavy and luxurious. It isn't ideal for travel (especially given there was powder around the edges of the compact due to kick up during shipping) but it feels very fancy.






Here is the actual product and a swatch on my hand. It is exactly as described, a champagne colored highlighter. The powder itself even feels soft and indulgent.

 

Finally, the product I considered taking the entire box for in the first place, the freebie Heartleigh polish. It is the most gorgeous glitter top coat and I was dying over it.




I swatched it on my thumb for you guys. It should be noted that the heart glitters are so large that you will need a top coat to hold them down. The thumb swatch was done using their Freedom Polymer topcoat for the purpose of brand consistency, I also did other swatches using a gel topcoat, but the freedom polymer top coat worked pretty well.

Personal Value

For 24$ I ended up with three products I am going to get use out of. A lot of their products run about the same price point so I'm just going to average it out. It comes down to $8 per product which honestly is only a little more than the price of a drugstore nail polish right now so I can't say I'm disappointed. If I had customized the box I know I would have gotten even better product value.