Innocent And Twisted Alchemy October 2015

The contents of this month's sub, including a baggie
of super delicious Haribo gummies- which are my favorite.

Long time no see! I've been off moving and having a wonderful time settling into college. However, I recently had some time over fall break to get back into blogging, and I'm hoping to have a set up for the rest of year.  Since it has been a while, I thought I would open with a run down of the subscription as a whole, how it works, and my experiences with it:



Innocent and Twisted Alchemy is an indie makeup company run by a woman named Linda. She has a monthly subscription where you pay automatically each month in exchange for a box of makeup. The subscription is quite affordable at 12$ a month for a domestic sample subscription and 18$ a month for a full-size subscription (shipping included in cost, or free, depending on how you want to view it). I happen to purchase and review the deluxe sample subscription.

The box is guaranteed to include:
- 3 deluxe sized samples that are exclusive ONLY to the subscriptions. 

- 30% off coupon code

- BONUS! Surprise items 

(Pulled from the i+ta website)

To elaborate on that I find that the box usually includes three completely filled three gram jars of eyeshadow with special hand drawn label art often done by Linda herself, a 30% coupon code, and usually around 3 samples from other indie brands. When I say usually I mean that often times the box includes more than that, I have rarely ever seen anything less than this and the value is always compensated for in some way. I do a value breakdown at the end of each review for this subscription and almost always find that this box is usually worth significantly more than its price and that is not including shipping cost, special label art, or coupons.

ALSO, I finally had a need to communicate with "customer service" (in quotations because the entire company is just Linda) because I needed to change my address and can now officially say that Linda was super nice and helpful. She forgot to change my address, but found out about it on her own pretty quickly (a little over a week later which seems incredibly diligent to me because I had never contacted her to ask about it) and emailed me to ask if I got my subscription or if I needed a new one sent out. Luckily, I had my mail forwarded so I actually got my package the day she sent the email but I appreciated the effort and care that was demonstrated on her part.

Review and Swatches

You should be able to double click on this image and actually read the main portion of October's information card. This month's theme is based off a collection of stories from /r/letsnotmeet  which is a subreddit that narrates the creepy true encounters of its user base.






The packaging this month is super cute, packed inside of the goody-bag style packaging that happens to be my favorite packaging in this subscription. Also, ALL OF THE PRETTY TAPE. Usually, its just one kind of tape, and this month there happen to be five because of Halloween. Halloween also happens to be my favorite holiday though, so I may be a bit biased.

 Dear, Linda, if you happen to read this, the skeleton tape malfunctioned a bit. Maybe avoid this brand in the future?





This month, all swatches are done using an eyeshadow brush over the Fergie Take on The Day eyeshadow primer.

 "3am+6am"

This is a super pretty mermaid blue with a green shift to it.

 "IM"

A deep chocolate brown base with both red and green shifts.

 "Movie Fun"
A warm toffee brown base with a very strong pink shift. I totally thought it was a pink shadow until I swatched it and ended up with this toffee color instead of the expected pink.









"Photobomb"

A bright orange red color with a greenish gold shift.










Now, for the samples. Despite the fact that the information card only shows three of the four samples, there is a fourth sample from Mad Lab Cosmetics.

 "Not That Tiffany" from Baroque Cosmetics


Brownish pink base with a strong pink shift.








"Sanguine" from Mad Lab Cosmetics

 Brown with deep red shift. Very sparkly, like dried unicorn blood that just happens to apply pretty patchily.

 "Superbowl Sunday XLVI" from Tick Tock Cosmetics

Glittery bronze color. It is one of the prettiest colors I have seen, but I wish it wasn't football themed because that just happens to be very much not my thing.

"The Shadder" from Notoriously Morbid

Super, super similar to IM from earlier, black-brown base with a red and green shift, I'd say it has a little more sparkle and less sheen though.

Value Breakdown

While not included in calculations, it should be noted that this month we received a 35% off coupon, and the Notoriously Morbid shadow was made exclusively for the sub which you can get a free full size of with any ten dollar purchase and the coupon code 

(4) i+ta deluxe shadow samples- 12$

(1) Notoriously Morbid shadow sample- 1.25$

(1) Baroque Cosmetics shadow sample- 1.50$

(1) Tick Tock Cosmetics shadow sample- 1$

(1) Mad Lab Cosmetics shadow sample- 1$

Total= 15.75$