April Boxycharm

April Boxycharm Unboxing

I was lucky enough to receive a year's subscription to Boxycharm for my birthday from a lovely family member, and I was very excited so of course I wanted to share it on here! The pictures for ths post will have a different background because I took them in a different place so that I could have some natural lighting. Do you prefer this background and lighting? Should I try my normal white background with natural lighting? Let me know in the comments!

The box itself is a bit smaller than I expected, but I'm fine with that because it's the products inside that matter anyways. I like how simple it is. I'm always in need of cardboard boxes, so getting one every month will be useful as well.

One of the cool things about Boxycharm is that it comes with a card that tells you the prices of each item in the box and tells you a bit about them, as well as how to use them. This is really useful if you aren't quite sure about how to use a product or want more ideas on how to use it.

I'll admit that I did peek at the products before taking photos, so they're a bit out of place, but I was excited! I'd watched YouTube videos on the box so I already knew what was in it but I wanted to touch and smell everything myself right away. This month's box contains five full size products.

The first item in the box is a hand cream from Anderson Lilley in the scent Manhattan Beach. It's worth $24.00 and you get 2 ounces. I looked at this product on their website and it claims to "quickly nourish, moisturize and protect your skin." When I tested it out, it did seem to absorb quickly while still moisturizing, so I would say that my first impression is these claims are true. It smells very nice to me, kind of fresh and almost floral. I think that having the word "beach" in the name is accurate because the scent does remind me of a beach.

Next up is the Ofra Long Lasting Liquid Lipstick in Pasadena, worth $19.90. On their website it says the full size is 6 grams but the packaging on this product says 8 grams, so I'm assuming this is the full size in some sort of updated packaging. I don't own very many liquid lipsticks but I've heard great things about these ones so I'm excited to test this out. I smelled it and it does smell very strongly of vanilla, so if you're sensitive to scents then you may not enjoy this.

I'm excited about this Blinc Black Lash Primer ($26.00) because I've wanted to try out a lash primer for a while now but they seem kind of gimmicky so I hadn't gotten around to it. Now that I have one I'll definitely try it out.

This is a Your Minerals loose eyeshadow in Brown Hypnotic ($21.00). I'm not into loose shadows most of the time but this has kind of a duochrome effect so I'm intrigued and will definitely try it out.

The last product is a LIP BALM! I love lip balms and I absolutely do not need any more but I am very welcome to the idea of more. I've already tried this one out and it's very thin so I'm skeptical of if it will really be that moisturizing, but I could be wrong. I'm willing to give it a go.

Shop My Stash

April 2016 Shop My Stash

I've been watching a lot of shop my stash videos on YouTube lately, and I wanted to try out doing one of my own. I only picked out 10 items for the month of April, and I will need to pull other items out of my collection on a daily basis because I didn't choose any eyeshadows or face powders. I just wanted to try this out without too much commitment. Two of the items are products I want to use up this year and I figured that having them out in plain view would help me remember to use them more regularly as well.

I've had this Maybelline Baby Skin for at least a year now, so it's time to start using it up before it goes bad. I'm going to do my best to use this every time I wear makeup.

Since I want to use this foundation up and I use it regularly anyways, I figured I might as well add it to my Shop My Stash basket. I do enjoy it when applied with a damp sponge, but I've used it for a long time now so I'm getting bored of it. Hopefully I can use it up soon.

I recently got this blush from ShopMissA and I wanted to make sure I tested it out thoroughly and gave it some good use so I put it in the basket. It's a pretty blue-toned pink that I think would suit lots of skin tones.

I use this giant eyeshadow as a face highlight, and I absolutely love it, so I decided to put it in the basket so I'd have something I really enjoy a lot. It gives a super nice glow that's intense without going overboard.

I love this mascara, but it's getting too old and I need to use it up. Even though I'm putting it in here to use up, I do also enjoy using it.

The reason I put this in my basket was to push me out of my comfort zone and force me to do some more colorful, spring-appropriate looks. I also know that I got this for my birthday last year, and my birthday is coming up again, so this is getting old and I need to get some use out of it. I think purple is the perfect color to start with if you want to do more colorful looks but don't know where to start because it's practically impossible for an eye color or skin color to look bad with purple.

Since I love MAC's Brave and I'm trying to use it up, I put it in my basket. It's the kind of color that works any time of year on nearly any skin color, so I thought that it would be good for days when I wasn't sure what lipstick to wear.

This is the Covergirl Oh Sugar! lip balm in Soda. I got this recently and I've been wanting to test it out so I added it to my basket. It smells absolutely lovely and the color is really nice. Not too sheer but not very pigmented either.

I also chose my Essence lipstick in Coral Calling because I think it's a great shade for spring. Corals scream spring and summer to me so this went into the basket! I've had this one for a few months now but I haven't fully tried it out so I'm curious to see if I like the formula more than other really inexpensive lipsticks.

The last item I put in my basket is this EOS lip balm in Blackberry Nectar. It smells really nice, I tend to like EOS, and I need a new lip balm to use, so this seemed like a good choice. My only issue with it is that it can be quite waxy unless you take the time to warm it up by applying extra.