BoxyCharm June 2022 Review

 Ok so I received my BoxyCharm for this month and need to talk about it, so just gonna jump in. I’ve only received a few BoxyCharm boxes since I’ve been into makeup and I didn’t like them as much as IPSY, so I only just resubscribed to continue reviewing and trying new things. Honestly I’ve never been as attracted to BoxyCharm’s vibe or interface or packaging or anything.

My box came in with a lot of goop all over it and it became obvious that something in the box had ESPLODED :( Unwrapping it was a nightmare.

Opened the box and one of the glass serum bottles had completely shattered all over the place, all over all the other products, just like EW.

So that was fun to clean up. The exploded product was the Sunday Riley serum that I’m pretty sure I was excited to try.

It smelled nice?

Anyway I’ve tried the other products and have some thoughts. 

To start off with my skin as always, it’s been pretty good the last few weeks. Barely any picking at all and I’ve been very good about my skincare routine, which you can read about in my routine page. It’s summer, obvs, so my skin is a little oilier than it would be at other times of the year. 

The first item I tried was the Dr. Brandt Backlight Primer, which is actually a product I had used in the past and really enjoyed. It’s a light brown color when it comes out and almost feels a little textured, but when it goes on my skin it sinks in and doesn’t leave any kind of cast. It grabbed my foundation really well, super happy to have another bottle of this stuff. The smell is just like nothing special, it just smells like makeup maybe.

After I finished my base, which went on perfectly over the primer, I applied an item that actually isn't listed on the website as part of the June box, but it was some kind of lip crayon. It was nice and pigmented and went on smoothly. Pretty bright too. I’ll go look for the packaging maybe so I can tell you what it was - I really wish it was just listed on the website though.

The next thing was a plumping lip gloss - the Kismet Polished Lip Plumping Gloss in the shade Baby. Honestly I wasn’t hyped about it, it didn’t seem to do anything and I didn’t feel or look any different. I mean, it’s nice that my lips didn’t sting, but I thought that was part of the point. On the plus side, the gloss was super pigmented and did look cute with the eye look I did, and the applicator was pretty big and applied lots of product.. But pretty underwhelming.

The only other thing in the box for makeup was the Eloise Beauty Sahara Nights Eye Shadow Palette. I was pretty skeptical about this palette because it was made completely of shimmer shadows, and that’s just typically something I don’t love. You can’t make an entire eye look from shimmers, and palettes tend to come with at least one good topper shade. That being said, the shimmer was there. These colors were excellent, super bright and shiny, and there was hardly any fallout as I put it on, which I get with even my favorite sparkles. The formula came off on my fingers really well and then came off onto my lids really well too, which y’all know is rare.

The only other item in the box was a serum that’s also not listed as a possible item for the June box, which is just annoying because wouldn’t it be good for me to be able to review it??

Anyway it’s called Honey Grail by Pharmacy. It’s not something my skin needs and I kinda wish Boxy had like a better understanding of my skin needs, because I do not apply oils to my face except in cleansing. It was a super thick sweet smelling oil that stuck on my hands, and it went on feeling grainy like maybe oil that’s gone bad? So I went to the sink and rinsed a bunch of it off and patted my face dry. But I couldn’t get a bunch of it off, and it completely ruined my face, pilled up all over my skin, and my foundation started to pill up within a few minutes of it going on. Looking in the mirror just seeing all my foundation separating around my mouth was heartbreaking. 

UPDATE: About a week and a half after I reached out to customer service about the breakage I got an email saying another box has been ordered for me. There isn’t really any clarification about whether this is an identical box which would kind of be weird because I don’t need doubles of all this stuff, or if it’ll just be a new box that ships with my next month’s box, which would actually be cool cause I could try out more products. 

So - not my favorite experience. I’ll continue with the subscription and see if there are ways like there are with IPSY to improve the quality of products I’m getting maybe. Hopefully the replacement box doesn’t have these kinds of issues and I can give a more thorough review of all the products, because I would have liked to try the Sunday Riley.

One other thing I’d like to make note of is that the Pharmacy Honey Grail serum that I talked about earlier has a note on the bottle stating it was made exclusively for Boxycharm. There are a lot of reasons this could happen, and in the past some subscription boxes have actually ordered products but had sneaky formula changes. This appears to be just a note on their bottles so that no one can return the product at a retail store for a refund, which I guess is a thing that people would do if they could.

Thanks for checking in! I’ll post a Box Battle within the week about the pros and cons for each box and what boxes I’m thinking of subscribing to.

~Dani