As earlier mentioned, I got my first ipsy bag in the mail today! I won’t be posting pictures tonight, though probably next week after finals I will. However, I wanted to make a post anyways to give my first impressions of this service.
If you don’t know, ipsy is a subscription “box” for beauty products. It costs $10 per month, and each month you’re sent a bag that contains 5 ((on occasion 6)) different products, with both full-size and sample-size products. The types of items you get in your bag varies from person to person, as when you sign up you are given a survey that determines what kinds of products you want and also takes note of your skin tone, eye color, skin type, and other information they use to provide a bag catered to you.
Since this is a blog that caters to nonbinary lovelies, I wanted to issue a bit of a warning: The website does not have a gender option, and automatically assigns you as female on your account. This is a huge oversight in my opinion, and appalling since adding a gender option is incredibly easy. Why they chose to rigidly assume all their customers are female-identifying is beyond me. That being said, the website isn’t something you would be on often, and I’ll tell you right now that I was floored by the quality of this service which for me makes it worth it to still participate.
Okay, now onto the actual product. It came in a thick bubble-wrap envelope which I feel well-secured the items, though I was a bit surprised that the envelope they shipped with was bright metallic magenta. Definitely not discreet packaging, if that’s something you need.
Along with the 5 products of the month, they come in a smell zipper pouch bag that is a different design every month. The design for this month was thankfully less overtly feminine than the packaging and website. It’s a two-tone bag that is white on one side and a cobalt blue on the other, with a coral-orange zipper. The material feels similar to pleather and is lined with a simple fabric matching the zipper. It appears to be sturdy and well-made, so now that I’m talking about the actual product I’m becoming impressed.
Inside the pouch bag were wrapped items, and I haven’t really tried any of them yet, so these are just some brief impressions.
Item #1: BellaPierre Shimmer Powder in “Celebration”
I believe this is a full-sized product, and is a loose eye shadow. The color is gorgeous and if it delivers the intense pigmentation that loose shadows are known for, I can only imagine how stunning it will look. It is a highly shimmery bronze color with gold tones in it. The packaging is simple and appealing as well.
Item #2: Elizabeth Mott All Over Shadow Brush
Since it’s a brush, it’s automatically full-sized of course. It’s a somewhat thick shadow brush with a hot pink handle and pink-tipped bristles. It doesn’t feel quite as soft as my ecotools eye brushes, but it does seem more flexible, and better for blending. The packaging is simple and fine, though because of it being a brush it’s sort of trivial since the packaging is thrown away.
Item #3: La Fresh Eco-Beauty Day Moisturizer “Good Day”
This was the only sample in the bag, I think. Though for a sample it gives a generous amount. At a glance I think I could get at least 5 good uses out of it. The packaging looks just like those apple sauce pouches, and are about the same size except not as thick.
Item #4: Pacifica Natural Mineral Coconut Eye Shadow in “Ethereal”
Back to full-sized product, this single shadow is actually bigger than the packaging made it appear, which is cool. Speaking of packing, the disposable portion was pretty but hard to remove in my case. As for the color, I am blown away. This color is unlike any I have, even though I own a large amount of neutrals. It is a champagne color with a rosy-mauve hint that gives it a sort of ashy hue. I expect it to be the perfect highlight color, and after doing a quick swatch on my hand I find it to be well pigmented. This is probably my favorite item in the bag, as the color really was something else. In addition, the Pacifica cosmetics are vegan, gluten-free, and against animal cruelty. The only bad thing is that for some reason you can only buy Pacifica eye shadows in palettes and the single shadows were made specifically for the ipsy bag, probably.
Item #5: Probelle Nail Lacquer in “Into the Blue”
I may need to check my survey, because I don’t really use nail products and tried to answer the survey to make this clear. This might just make me eat my words, though, since as with the other pigmented products, the color is exactly something I would love/wear. A bright but not loud sky blue, and also the slightest bit periwinkle as well. Also, this is full-sized.
All in all, I am extremely impressed with ipsy in terms of the items I received. It blew Birchbox out of the water, which is another beauty subscription box that is also $10 per month, but is almost entirely samples with an occasional full-sized product. But that’s beside the point.
As I’ve mentioned several times, this bag and all the contents in it cost me $10. For fun, let’s add up the retail value of each item and see the savings. The only exception is that the ipsy bags don’t sell for retail to my knowledge, but I would value it as something you’d pay $5 for.
Pouch Bag - $5
BellaPierre Eye Shadow - $14.99
Elizabeth Mott Shadow Brush - $9.99
Pacifica Eye Shadow - $14.00 for a palette of four, so about $3.50 per color.
Probelle Nail Color - $6.00
Moisturizer*: $40.00 for full-size ((given the amount of product, the sample is probably worth $6.00 or so))
Total Value: $37.48
Look at this. You see that? I paid $10.00 to get four full-sized products and a sample of a high-end product. Heck, two of the full-sized products were either equal to the total price, or more.
Definitely something to look into if you want to expand you beauty products but are short on cash, and like having a mini-Christmas arrive in the mail.
Look forward to when I test these and upload pictured! I’m beyond eager, already waiting for next month’s bag.