Starlooks Starbox June 2013 Review

The Starlooks Starbox is another of my regulars; one that probably won’t be canceled anytime soon. I LOVE this subscription. For $17.68 per month ($15 for the box, $2.68 for shipping), you get 3-4 full sized items of makeup and usually a smaller bonus item or sample. To me, the makeup is really good quality and I absolutely believe I’m getting my money’s worth each month. Each month has a theme that is tied to the items in that month’s box. June’s theme, in addition to being their 1st anniversary, was Modern Warhol, and promised “staple products” that would be useful every day. Starlooks does tend to rotate their boxes between brights, neutrals, and mixes – I suppose this was a neutral month. Being that this was their anniversary month, I think everyone had pretty high hopes that it would be a special box with awesome contents, since other subscription boxes seem to put a bit more effort into their anniversary boxes, often making them a bit more valuable. So, without further ado, the June 2013 box:

Opening the box

June's info card

Hrm. Well, ok, not an amazing first look (especially when compared to something like, say, December’s box, with it’s awesome 15-piece eyeshadow palette, a $109 value, which was actually the reason I signed up – love that palette!) but let’s look a bit deeper at the contents.
The first item is a Precision Eye Pen in black. A basic for sure (as the box said it would contain), but for me, awesome! I use liquid eye liner daily. My 2 must-haves are liquid eye liner and mascara. I can never have enough! So, yeah, I’m certainly a fan of this! It goes on very precisely and with it’s fine tip, you can apply it as thin or thick as you’d like. And with a $16 value on it’s own, my box is basically already paid for!

Starlooks Precision Eye Pen in black

The second item, another eye product, was the Eye Liner Pencil in white. I’m a little less enthused about this one, since I usually rim my waterlines with a nude pencil, but I can give white another shot! It was creamy and easy to apply, which I loved. This has a value of $12.

Starlooks Eye Liner Pencil in white (also, egads, I apologize for having my damaged nails in these pictures - too much polish!)

The third, and final makeup product was their Bronzer in Montego Bay. <sigh> Oh, bronzer. Ok. So, in my Beauty Box 5 post, I noted that I’m really not a fan of bronzers and self-tanners. I’m just not a tan-look person. However, I do think powders are better for me than lotions. With powders, at least I can control the darkness and I can use it more to highlight and contour. So, while this isn’t my favorite item to get, I’ll definitely try it. And this one is very nice, as bronzers go. It was really silky and a pretty shimmery bronze color, which should work out nicely to highlight, or maybe even as an eyeshadow. This product is valued at $19.

Starlooks Bronzer in Montego Bay

Swatches of the 3 products in the June 2013 Starbox. From left to right: Bronzer in Montego Bay, Eye Liner Pencil in white, and Precision Eye Pen in black.

The bonus item this month was this peace pin:

??

I’m sorry, this is just lame. In the past, bonuses have been things like samples of their lip scrub, lip balm, and a bracelet. All useful, cool stuff. I have no idea what they were thinking with this pin. I certainly won’t use it. <shrug>

June 2013 Starlooks Starbox (they always include a little crystal - I'm not sure why!)

Overall, this box had a value of $47 (not including whatever the pin might be worth – cents?), well over the $15 price of the box. Ignoring the fact that it was the anniversary month, I’m mostly happy with this box. Given that it’s a summer month, the bronzer is spot on and eye liner, of one kind or another, is something a lot of people use in their daily routines, so as a staple providing box, this is great. I LOVE the precision liner and I’ll certainly play with the white liner and the bronzer. However, taking into account that this IS their anniversary box (the box even says so in big letters!), I really would have liked to see something a bit more special. Maybe one extra item or a cool color of eye liner instead of the white (especially given that little insert about us asking for turquoise! Don’t make it a special offer for us to buy – put it in the box!). And certainly something better than that pin. Come on!
In spite of my small sense of let down about the anniversary box, I’m definitely continuing on with this subscription. And with the 35% off discount we got with Ipsy this month (Starlooks is actually advertising it on the site, too, so I guess everyone can use it), I ordered the Regular Russ set for $16.25! Can’t wait for that to arrive! If you’d like to sign up for the Starlooks Starbox, go to their site here! If you’re already a subscriber, how did you like the June box?

(And just a disclaimer: I bought this box myself and was not compensated for this review in any way. All opinions are my own.)

The Jungle Stand June 2013 Review

The Jungle Stand Tasting Bar is a new box subscription for me. I had seen a few others blog about it and it looked really interesting. At $9.92/month, it’s a fairly reasonable price to try out new flavors and foods you might not normally come across. I got notification that my box shipped on June 19th, the day I went out of town this past weekend. I was hoping it would be a bit slow and not show up till Monday, the day after I got home, but it shipped quickly (which I would normally be super happy about!). I was a bit nervous about it not being safe to eat after sitting in my hot Texas mailbox for 2 1/2 days (and I didn’t know what was inside yet to really judge), so I emailed them to ask. I got a super quick response from Jackie, who let me know this box would be fine to eat. I thanked her for her quick response and got another response from Jackie minutes later. She was super nice. It’s great to see awesome customer service. Anyway, on to the box! June’s theme was “Welcome to Taiwan”. I was pretty excited to try it!

Opening the box

So, when you open the box, there’s 6 compartments with color coded “tastes”. It’s up to you whether you want to see what they are before or after you taste. I went with before for my first tasting bar. The box comes with an info card with descriptions and nutritional information on each “taste”:

Not pictured is the sheet with nutritional information

My first taste was the sachima. It was very sweet and caramelly tasting and had an odd airy yet squishy texture. I liked this one but didn’t love it. Next up was the rice cracker. I was a bit wary of this one because it reminded me of those rice sticks wrapped in seaweed, which I’m really not a fan of. To a degree it was somewhat similar, but it had a sweet coating that made it much tastier than the seaweed variety. It wasn’t bad, but probably my second least favorite of the bunch. Third, was the sesame pastry. This one was really interesting. Just as the card suggest, when I bit into it, it was really soft and airy with a harder outside. It was sweet and I really liked the taste – I’d put it even with the sachima.

The inside was really soft and airy and almost reminded me of cotton candy fibers.

Fourth – ugh, I was not looking forward to this one – was squid. Now, normally, I love squid. Cooked and in a pasta or with vegetables or something. This was sweet and just plain weird. I put a pinch of it in my mouth and it was just jarring. It smelled fishy but tasted sweet and had a jerky texture. Blech. Nope. There was a packet of saltines included, I guess to cleanse your palette, so I ate one of those and moved on. Next, was the pumpkin cake. There really was no cake texture to this one, it was crunchy like granola. And super tasty. This one was definitely my favorite. I’m not sure I tasted much pumpkin (or the seaweed that was in it, thankfully), but the flavor was just really good. Crunchy and salty/sweet. I’d definitely buy more of this! Finally, the last taste was peanut brittle. It was very hard. Really hard to bite into in fact. But it was tasty. A different look than I’m used to with peanut brittle, but a similar flavor. I’d probably put this even with the sachima and the sesame pastry.
So, overall, I really enjoyed this box. There was only one “taste” I didn’t like and the rest were awesome to try. I even found a snack I’d like to find more of! It was really fun to try these since I’m not sure where I’d find them without Jungle Stand. I kind of wish I had gotten my hubby in on the action to get another set of opinions (especially for this month since he likes a lot of Asian foods, whoops). A few of the tastes were kind of small, but there is some of a few of them left, so I’ll see if he wants to try. For sure next month, I’ll get his opinions too (because I’m absolutely continuing this subscription!).
If you want to sign up, go to The Jungle Stand’s website! If you already get Jungle Stand, what did you think of this month’s tastes?

(And just a disclaimer: I bought this box myself and was not compensated for this review in any way. All opinions are my own.)

Hi!

Well, I’ve decided to start a separate blog (my main, Sleepymel’s Thoughts, is on hold for now, probably until I’m pregnant again. Working on this blog may get me interested in updating that one earlier, though.) for my Subscription boxes. I’m loving subscription boxes at the moment, and I really like seeing what other people get, getting spoilers a few days early if someone else gets theirs first, and hearing about new boxes, so I thought I’d start posting what I get! Enjoy!