August Birchbox

FINALLY my Birchbox showed up today! Yeesh, it felt like it took forever this month. Well here we go!



Not the usual bright pink this month! Instead it was the color of a school bus.....

.....and its because its a "Beauty School" theme! Man, all this back to school stuff is increasing my loathing of having to return to class on the 20th :(
Also, this box had a card in it saying that Birchbox is raising money from your purchases this month to build schools overseas. Sadly there was nothing in this box that inspired me to purchase anything this month.
In this box there's a Schick Hydro Silk Razor with coupons for replacement heads, 2 oz. bottle of Miss Jessie's Original Quick Curls, full sized PIXI Beauty Lid Last Shadow Pen,  a sample of Juicy Couture Viva la Juicy La Fleur, and 3 Beauty Fixation Make Up Removers.

First up is the PIXI Beauty Lid Last Shadow Pen.....try saying that 3 times fast! I received the color "Gilded Mink" which is like a lighter, shimmery brown. It is supposed to double as a shadow pen or an eye liner and it has a great consistency. It slid on to my skin evenly and the color is going to compliment my neutral make up (Urban Decay Naked2 palette) wonderfully. I had to look up how you are supposed to sharpen this pen. I looked to see if it twisted up (nope) or if I had a sharpener to fit it (nope) so then I trusted Google and found this article which explains that you have to have the PIXI brand sharpener to access the rest of the product.....well that's a bummer. PIXI products are sold at Target, so if you are near one, you can probably pick one up there. I am going to check for one on my next visit.  :)

I spritzed some of the Juicy Couture Viva la Juicy La Fleur perfume on my wrist and its actually not to bad. It is definitely a floral scent....duh, La Fleur, but it also has a powdery note to it. I might have picked up on some of the mandarin, but did not pick up on the wild berry notes. Not being a fan of the original Viva la Juicy, I was surprised that I liked this one.

Ah yes, the Schick Hydro Silk razor....how the hell did this end up in a Birchbox? The only thing I can think of is we are heading into Fall and Winter and Birchbox is secretly letting us know that it is not ok to stop shaving our legs and arm pits  LOL. The only thing on me that needed shaving when this box came in.....was my girly bits. (Yeah, I don't keep that shit trimmed up any more because I am single. Admit it single ladies, you don't either!)  I hopped in the shower to shampoo my hair to try the next product and used this little razor to take care of my nether-region. I love how large the handle is, I love the hole for your finger so it doesn't slip, and it did give a really nice close shave. I am comparing it to my Venus razor, which has a smaller head, which I prefer. I will hold onto this razor and try it on my legs next. If it ends up being the cat's-ass, then I will bring my Venus to the lake house and use the coupons that came with the Schick to get more heads.....we shall see!

This was not a full sized product, but 2 oz. of Miss Jessie's Original Quick Curls is going to go a long way (the full size is 8 oz.) So I shampooed and conditioned my hair and then used the Amika Hair Mask to prep my hair for curling. This creme is kind of thick, smelled clean with a hint of something minty, and was kind of a pain to get through all my hair. Directions say use one tablespoon, which I started out with, but I had to add another half tablespoon to cover the rest of my hair. Because this creme is thick, you really have to make sure its covering your hand evenly before you go in for the spread so you don't get a huge product deposit in one place. FYI you can visit Miss Jessie's here and get free samples of products! You do have to enter your credit card for verification, but they tell you that it won't be charged.

This is my hair wet with the product in it. My hair is long, medium thickness, and naturally curly. So decided for my first test I would let my hair dry naturally and I headed off to the tanning bed with my wet hair (yeah yeah yeah, I have no one to impress LOL).



When I came home, my hair looked like this! (Forgive my no-makeup, post-tan face) Not too bad for just letting it air dry huh? The pros to this creme, is that I got great volume, defined curls, and it did not take as long as it usually does for my hair to air dry. The cons were that my hair didn't really feel that soft (not that it was hard or crunchy, I guess I just expected softer since it says its packed with moisturizers and that it doubles as a rescue treatment for fried hair) and it didn't smell girly. It has a bland, uni-sex kind of smell to it and I love when my hair products smell girly and nice because my hair tends to take on the scent of whatever the hell it comes near. I think I am going to give this a second shot with a diffuser and see what happens.



Lastly, Birchbox included these little beauty fixation make up removers. I have tried these before from a different brand and did not care for them. It is a nice concept, but I am still at a loss on what to really use them for. You can't use them to remove your eye make up because just one of those little ends doesn't really work well enough to get all the eye make up off your eye. It kind of smears it around and you have to use a cotton round to clean it off your face. You can't really use them for fixing eye liner that you messed up, because once that make up remover is on your face, since its an oil, it kind of spreads out and starts breaking down your make up or it keeps it moist so when you inevitably touch your face, your make up smears. I am also confused because both ends are covered with cotton, but you can only use the end with out the color ring.......huh, its a mystery.

There you have it! This box paid for itself this month because the PIXI product alone is worth $18 (even if I will have to purchase a sharpener), not to mention the Schick Hydro razor which is probably worth a few bucks. If you want to get your own Birchbox so you can share your feed back with me, sign up here!

Jenn