July BoxyCharm Swatches and Thoughts

 Hiii hello how’s it going? July’s box was very interesting and I liked a lot of what I got. And I added a lot and then I also bought a lot. My credit card bill is not small. I have made tactical errors.

So the first item IPSY chose for me is the Brazilian Glow Eyeshadow Palette from Ciate London. I feel like I’m seeing a lot more of this brand on IPSY, both in their default choices and their selection and add-ons. 

This palette is the biggest palette I’ve received or bought in a while. It’s absolutely huge. It’s got 24 pans. They’re rectangle pans, so they are a little slimmer, but still a good size and honestly more realistic. Am I really going to hit pan? You know?

So it’s got a really good mix of mattes, shimmer, and demi-shimmer shades and the color story is cohesive enough that the palette feels put together but varied enough that you know there are so many looks you can do with it. It also shifts slightly from deeper shades in the top left corner to lighter shades in the bottom right, although this shift is very understated. 

There are a handful of excellent midtone shades, a really good dark brown and a deep black, and then a great assortment of other shades in shimmers and mattes. There’s a beautiful banana yellow, Endless  is a really nice deep shimmer, I imagine it on the lower lashline. And then there’s a few excellent bright silver and gold shimmers and toppers. 

The theme is very island sunset. It works very well.

So the formula for the mattes is great, they blend very well and they’re pigmented but not to the point where they’re hard to work with. They definitely fallout, like you do need to tap off the brush insistently, but it’s manageable. I’d definitely recommend this to a beginner. 

The formula for the shimmers I wasn’t as impressed with, it’s less buttery. But I was able to get enough on my fingertip to put a layer on the lid, so it’s not like they were powdery. I just really like the formula better in the Tarte palettes or some of the Jeffree Star ones, they feel almost like a cream product. 

The palette retails for $45, which I think is slightly steep but not completely out of the world. Like, I’d say $39 makes more sense for what you get. But you can find it on Poshmark for as low as $17, so if you can get it on a good deal I highly recommend it. I plan to use it pretty often, specifically because of the midtone shades. 

The next item IPSY picked out for me is the Marina Biome Brightening Ampoule from Earth Harbor. You guys remember EH right? I’ve used a few of their products and overall like them very much. I think they’re pretty greenwashed, but still, good stuff. 

Ampoule refers to a sealed glass containing liquid, especially for injecting. So I do think the term was applied a little liberally. But I get what they were going for.

So I don’t know why, but I thought this was going to be closer to a serum than a facial oil, but when I put it on the texture actually feels like a heavy facial oil. It feels good, but it’s way too sticky to wear under makeup or during the day, too heavy and greasy.

But I have been wearing it at night. Honestly, there isn’t much to say about it. My skin in the morning feels soft, sure. I don’t notice much else. It should be noted that it’s supposed to deal with discoloration and hyperpigmentation, so maybe I need to use it longer to see results. I don’t hate it, it’s just gotta be for nighttime.

It retails for $38 on their website, and for a bottle this size that isn’t excellent. But then, serums are always pricey. 

I think these two items were a good combo for IPSY’s choices for me - some makeup and some skincare, a very makeup-heavy brand and a very skincare-heavy brand, good variety. 

Two of my choice items, I haven’t even touched yet. I’m sorry, they just weren’t exciting and I had other things I was wanting to use. So I’ll talk about them later if I Have anything to say. But my goodness, there was one that made up for everything.

Completely new brand to me, Lucky Chick. I looked at their site and their photos and promotionals are not that well done, but this product is fire. It’s the Lip + Cheek Multi-Stick in the shade Lucky Days. 

This product is incredible. The packaging is a lot like a bullet lipstick, like it’s got a cap and you twist it up to use it, which makes sense because it’s for lip and cheek. The bullet comes up and it’s got several swirled shades of pink and mauve, which makes it just look so pretty.

I’ve mostly used it on my cheeks after contour by warming it up with my fingertip and then swirling it over the round end of my beauty blender, and blending it on from there from the top of my contour to my temple. And it’s so beautiful. It’s such a gorgeous color, the blend is smooth and seamless, it’s just the right amount of pigment that I don’t need to go back over it with my other products. It’s incredible. It’s everything a cream blush should be.

I think the fact that it’s in a bullet instead of a compact helps me not apply too much and spread it out better. 

Later in the post, I’ll review another cream blush that I also really like, but this one is the only cream blush I will ever buy intentionally.

Also, it’s only $20. I would pay $30 for something this perfect. Immediately go get one. I am placing an order on their site now to try some other stuff. Please follow along, this brand could be something incredible.

And the last bunch of  items are items I added-on to my bag, and a few I ordered separately.

First up is the Silk Protein Primer from another new brand to me, Kat Burki. I looked at the website and it looks like a very expensive, very boujee, modern, etc. It’s for the well-to-do. 

The packaging for this primer is very pretty, white bottle with a golden bronze cap and pump. I was very surprised at the texture - it pumps out into a foam, like it almost feels like a tiny little bottle of shaving cream. It’s adorable.

It has a really pretty fragrance too, hard to describe but it’s definitely the kind of fragrance you expect from expensive skincare.

I have not skipped this primer for a day. It goes on smooth like a serum, but feels slightly tacky afterwards, and my foundation just looks so smooth over it. Also, I notice that I’m not as oily at the end of the day, and I still don’t powder. 

It’s $54 retail, which is way too much, but I’m sure gonna look at deals or finding it on Ebay or Poshmark or something cause it’s incredible. 

I also added on the Dragonfruit + Niacinamide Face Polish from Purlisse Beauty. I was hesitant to choose this because the last one of these I tried from them, which was some kind of pumpkin or something, I hated. I hated it so much. And this looked basically identical but with a different theme. 

But I’m glad I bought it. Even though it’s the same packaging and texture, the formula doesn’t smell awful and I can actually enjoy the exfoliation. It does leave my face feeling very conditioned - I think this is because it’s a very creamy texture, not a lot like a cleanser, more like a cream or something.

It’s not very rough, which isn’t ideal, but I just use it more often and it works out. I don’t have a ton else to say about it, it’s a decent exfoliator that I plan to use up. I have used better, but it works. 

Next it an item I chose even though I haven’t been using them recently. It’s a charcoal mask from Origins, called the Clear Improvement Active Charcoal Mask. It’s a really good product and it’s made me start using this type of thing more. All winter I stopped using my mud masks and started using only cream masks and replenishing masks, since my skin was dryer. Now it’s the height of summer and my skin is oily, and it’s too hot to wear makeup all the time so I’ve been picking more.

So the bottle is just a standard clear squeeze tube that stands upside down. You pop the cap open and squeeze it out like a hand cream.

The formula is very soft and pretty thick compared to others like maybe GlamGlow, which has a lightweight formula. It’s easy to spread out but the layer isn’t thick enough until I got back over the patches. 

After rinsing my skin feels so exfoliated and smooth, and since I’ve been using it I’ve noticed that the picking that does happen seems to fade much more quickly.

Also it retails for $34, which I think is totally reasonable for what you get. It’s a yes from me.

Next up is another incredible liquid blush that I am also wearing all the time. It’s from Iconic London which I need to make sure not to mix up with Ciate anymore. Why is it London? You never see Iconic Detroit. Don’t really understand the naming.

Anyway this is a completely different vibe from the other blush I was talking about. It’s a small tube, sort of like eyeshadow primer would come in. The cap twists off and everything. It’s in the shade Power Pink. 

The formula for this blush is amazing. I squeeze a couple little dots out onto my beauty blender and tap them on my cheek, but it isn’t so pigmented that the places it touches that it can’t be blended. You know sometimes you need to blend the blush before it goes on because it stains? But this one doesn’t, it actually blends out into nothing and leaves a really beautiful sheen.

The only thing is the color - I ordered a color that was a really pretty pink, but it’s actually a deeper mauve when it squeezes out. I think the color that ends up on my cheek does resemble the color that’s in the marketing though.

It is so flattering, I love how it looks. Today I used it exclusively on my cheeks, no contour or highlight, and it’s just really feminine and beautiful. I plan to order more. 

$27 is a lot for this tiny bottle, and the prices on Poshmark aren’t much better, so I won’t probably pursue it. But I plan to keep an eye out for it during choice and sales for sure, especially in the other shades, although I really do like this one.

Next up is the Niablend Serum Concealer from Toyfactory. It’s in the shade L1. This is also a really tiny bottle, but it goes a long way.

I don’t typically enjoy liquid concealers over cream ones, but this is pretty good. I used way too much the first few times I used it and have scaled it back to just a small drop on my beauty blender. It does have skincare properties and stays put throughout the day, which I appreciate as I work long days. It’s also a good tone for my skin, not too pink or yellow. 

There just isn’t enough product to use it often and so I have only applied it a handful of times. Always the same, pretty high coverage. I will say it looks a little strange if I use it with a skin tint, then most of my face is low coverage and my undereyes are high coverage. 

Last but not least! The Golden Cleanser from Keys Soulcare. This is the third item I’ve tried from the brand, and another hit. I just learned that it’s actually Alicia Keys’ skincare brand? Which I never would have guessed but makes sense in retrospect. 

So I currently use their moisturizer in the evening, and now I have this cleanser, the only other thing is that cleansing balm from earlier this year. 

The size I got is a sample, like a travel size. I’ve used it a good eight or nine times, and generously. It’s a silky texture, not like very soapy until it’s lathered up, and it’s golden like honey. It doesn’t smell sweet like honey though, it’s more like a musky kind of flowery scent. It’s nice though, I do like it. 

It leaves my skin feeling very clean and even though it’s a stickier texture it still rinses off fine. It doesn’t turn me all dry like a really intense cleanser, you know that feeling where your skin has been completely stripped. My skin just feels smooth and refreshed and obviously not as greasy.

It also only retails for $22, so it’s not one of those items that I’d never be able to afford unless it appeared in my box.

I enjoy it so much I’ve actually chosen it as an add-on for my ICON box, which shipped a few days ago. There are a few things in there that I’m actually really excited for. Today I need to go through the last few months of products and make some difficult decisions, and get ready for an entire new set of products to try.

It’s been over a year now of doing these posts and I still think they’re really good for me. I’m more organized and it makes the money I spend on the subscriptions feel a little more meaningful, like not only are the products bringing me joy but I can also really look closely at them and think about whether I’d recommend them.

Thanks very much for reading and I’ll write again when I get my ICON! 

Talk soon :)

Dani