Birchbox Review: January 2013

This month’s Birchbox theme is “The Best Year Ever”. And I swear I almost wrote the title as “January 2012”, I wonder if it’s just me or does everyone feel awkward when they have to type the new year when they sign things come January?!

There are 34 box variations and I am getting the box #12. When I checked my dashboard to see what I was getting I was pleasantly surprised with the selection of products. I can see myself using everything except for the perfume, since my heart already belongs to Zents fragrances.

About Birchbox: 
Birchbox is a subscription service that delivers a box of luxury samples to your doorstep every month. Each box is customized to match your beauty profile to ensure you get the samples you want, you will usually get 4-5 samples and sometimes even full-sized products! The samples vary from make-up and skincare, to food and beauty accessories, and each box is carefully hand-wrapped. At $10/month Birchbox is one of the cheapest monthly beauty subscriptions out there, the value of each box usually ranges from at least $15 and can be as high as $60. They also have a nice rewards program, where for each product survey you complete you get 10 points, every 100 points earns you $10 in Birchbox credits which you can redeem in their online store for full-sized products. 
If you would like to use my referral link then click here to join Birchbox. Thank you!


Clark’s Botanicals Smoothing Marine Cream
This moisturizer contains glycolic acid and jasmine absolute, both of which are among my favorite ingredients in beauty products. The cream smells very nice and fresh and feels incredibly pampering: it’s light and rich at the same time, and you can really physically feel when it starts working the very moment you put it on. My skin started stinging a little bit, which is not unusual for glycolic acid products. One thing to mention though, since glycolic acid makes your skin sun sensitive you must always wear a layer of SPF on top of it to make sure you don’t get any unwanted sun damage.

Figuring out the size of this sample was quite a pain since it’s not listed anywhere, not even on Clark’s Botanicals website. After comparing it to my skincare collection I found that the size of this sample almost exactly matches the jar of Burt’s Bees Naturally Ageless eye cream which is 0.5oz. And looks like I was right because in my search for any officially listed size I came across this special offer on SpaLook.


amika Color pHerfection Shampoo
I just love amika bottles, they’re so fun and colorful and that somehow positively contributes to my overall experience with the products. Today I used this shampoo instead of my usual and at first I thought it left kind of a greasy feeling on the top of my head. I ended up washing my hair twice with the same result so apparently it’s supposed to be like that after all. The end result was pretty good: my hair felt very soft and I needed to use less Orofluido since most of my frizz was tamed well. Doubt I would purchase a full-sized bottle, but it was fun to try.


theBalm Cosmetics Put a Lid On It
This primer was alright, it felt the same as my Tarte eye primer does – a little greasy and runny. The eye shadows stayed put all day without creasing and flaking off, which is what I’d expect of this type of product. I don’t really have any overly positive or negative things to say, just like I mentioned above it could be a bit too greasy for some people, especially those with naturally oily eyelids.

Harvey Prince Skinny Chic
Poor Birchbox is being egged on their Facebook page for sending out these perfume samples, because a lot of women feel like it propagates certain standards of beauty which many find an unethical thing to do, however to me this is just a perfume sample. I mean if I was to complain about anything here I’d complain about the whole fact that this is a perfume sample and I don’t care for those at all. Period. I’m not sure how this fragrance works to suppress appetite, but it smells really sweet so maybe when you inhale it you feel like you just ate a candy or something. Don’t know if it worked for me or not because I wasn’t hungry at all when I sampled it, but from the fragrance standpoint I didn’t like the scent at all, just like I didn’t enjoy Hello from this same company. Fragrances are very individual and I know there are tons of people who loved this one. I guess being Skinny and Chic is just not for me. 🙂


[Extra] 100% Pure Nourishing Body Cream
I’m glad Birchbox listened to our feedback and removed Larabars as extras from most boxes. I said “most” because I don’t know if they’re gone for good, but many boxes I’ve seen so far don’t have them. Anyhow, I have already tried 100% Pure lotions in Apple, Coconut and Honey flavors so I thought I’d get one of those. I was pleasantly surprised to see two scents I haven’t used before, so that worked out pretty well for me. All 100% Pure lotions smell like heaven and rainbows, I mean literally all of them do. So if you have a favorite scent and 100% Pure has a lotion with it be prepared for an outburst of awesomeness. These samples are super tiny but I managed to cover half of my body with one and another half with the other and that was barely enough. The formula is quite rich so my skin felt very comfortable and I seriously couldn’t get over the delicious scents. I may possibly purchase a full-sized tube, but I’m really swamped with body lotions right now and I’d love to go through those first. Although I’m a total sucker for good deals so if I see one for this brand I might cave and buy it anyway.

Disclosure: I bought this.