Glossybox January '13- First Impressions

Hey Everyone, 

It's GlossyBox time again (it seems to get dispatched earlier and earlier or is that just me?) and mine arrived this afternoon so this post is going to be mostly first impressions of the box and products. It was only dispatched yesterday so next day delivery is pretty good going! 

 This month the box is back to the usual pale pink boxes with plain black paper and pink ribbon after the special silver themed box last month. The boxes are really useful for storage (mine are currently home to my nail polishes) but I'm not so much a fan of the black shredded paper used to pack the products. Especially this month as I didn't think the inside of my box was packaged as nicely as it normally is- there was less shredded paper and it seemed to be packed upside down, when usually the sticker is on the top, this month it was underneath. Also I noticed that the larger paper fold out leaflet from last month's box has stuck, instead of the cards that used to be included detailing the products. I really like the change as it includes more extra information than before which is nice. 

When I first opened the box

The products in the box with not very much paper this month!

The products inside

This month's box theme is detoxing from the excesses of the Christmas and New Year period, with the products inside intended to help everyone get back into their usual routine and being a little more healthy which I thought was a really good theme and will most likely help a lot of people do just that, as well as finding some new products to add. So, let's have a closer look at the products included-

I'm going to start with this GlossyBox sleep mask, as it's not included on the information sheet and is just an extra little thing they've thrown in. It's a good idea and fits with the theme of the box but I'm pretty sure I won't be using it as the thought of waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to see terrifies me! (In fact, I recently woke up in the middle of a power cut and thought I'd gone blind because it was so dark but that would be a whole other embarrassing post!)

Next up we have the Elemis Fresh Skin Skin Glow Exfoliating Face Wash which is an exfoliating face wash designed specifically for those in their teens to mid-twenties to help nurture skin and prevent premature aging. It smells really nice and fruity, which is usually something that I like in face wash products although the exfoliating beads don't seem to be very big so I do wonder how well it would work as an exfoliator- I prefer to really feel like a product is doing something to my face. Having said that I was skeptical about the Dermalogica MicroExfoliant for the same reasons and that turned out to be amazing so I'm keeping an open mind for when I properly try this. The sample is 30ml and a full size is 100ml at £12.

Also in the box was a Jason Lips Bee Healthier Lip Balm which is a 70% natural lip balm made with beeswax, peppermint, aloe, shea butter and many other ingredients that are good for your lips! I've used an aloe vera gel from this company before as an aftersun/sunburn product and really liked it so I was interested  to see what the lip balm was like. Also, I'm just a bit of a lip balm addict so this was always onto a winner with me! You can definitely smell the mint in this, and also the shea butter smells a lot like chocolate to me, so this is like a chocolate mint lip balm. The mint definitely tingles your lips but not too much, like the beeswax Burt's Bees lip balm that this reminded me of when I first saw it. The lip balm is basically like most other lip balms- it applies nicely and is moistursing but I feel like it's one of the ones I will find myself having to reapply a lot more than other lip balms that I own. This one does melt really quickly as well which is nice, as it feels almost like a lip gloss and does leave a subtle gloss to your lips but with no colour or tint to it. It's a bit of a meh product for me, simply because I can be quite fussy when it comes to lip balms but for £1.99 for 4.5g it's not too bad really. 

Next we have the Duck Island Limited Body lotion in the scent mandarin and bergamont. Usually I don't like citrus scented products, especially orange scented but this is really nice and reminds me of orange calpol from when I was little. The bottle is really cute and I like the lid which is quite unusual but then everything starts to get a little odd from there on in. The lotion feels very thin, almost watery so I'm not sure how moisturising it would be and I'd feel like I needed to use a lot before feeling any real benefits. I've just been on their website for pricing and to get a link and discovered something very strange. In the Glossybox leaflet it says 2x250ml- £24.95 Shop at Duckisland.co.uk but I've just been on the site and unless I'm being incredibly stupid, you can only buy the small 30ml bottles in cases of 200 at a time and the larger 250ml bottles in cases of 20 at a time. Also there are various products (hand lotion, body wash, soap, hand wash etc) but they are all only in the scent of mandarin and bergamont, which is a bit of a bummer if you don't like it! If anyone can explain to me how this makes any sense, or knows where you can buy less than 200 or 20 bottles of this, please let me know in the comments!!  

Second to last, we have the Monu Aromatic Mask which I'm really excited to try as I love face masks and I've heard of this brand before but have never used any of their products. It contains lavender and rosemary which are what it smells mostly off, which I'm not usually a fan of but with this I think it will make it really relaxing to wear. It's quite a generous sample size at 30ml, when usually you just get one or two sachets but it's quite a hard plastic bottle and the mask is quite thick so may have to cut it to get everything out. I hope that the larger size (which is £24.95 for 100ml) doesn't have the same problem! 

Lastly we have the Premae Skincare Balance Rescue Face Tonique which is a face toner designed to reduce oil and pores, leaving your skin feeling fresh and plump. I'm not sure what to make of this really as I've never really used a toner in the past or really known what they're supposed to do if I'm totally honest! It doesn't even have really much a smell to it so there's not much really I can say. On first impressions this is probably the thing I was least excited about but even then, it's not definitely something I would never use like some of the things I've recieved in previous boxes. Also there's a bit of an issue with the price as Glossybox is saying a full size is 50ml and £27.50, whereas the website they supplied for buying the product claims a full size is 100ml and only £17.50... who knows?! 

I'm not going to work out the maths of the box this month because it's now twenty past midnight and I'm being lazy hehe (maths was never my strong point!) plus there's some issues with the full size prices as I mentioned, so I'm not sure I would be able to work it all out anyways!

All in all, I thought this month's box was one of the good ones and there wasn't a product that I definitely hated straight away, like the Milk Shake hair stuff that I mentioned from last month's box. However I do know that some people got other things in their box- for example my best friend Marion from BeautyGeek90 got all different products in her box and wasn't very impressed with it I don't think. 

Have you recieved your Glossybox this month? Is there anything you got different to me or have you used any of these products previously? Or can you explain to me what the hell is going on with the pricing of the Duck Island body lotion hehe!? Leave me a comment below =D 

Lauren

xx