Bondi August 2013 Review - Box 1

New box time!! When a new polish box pops up, I just have to try it. So, when I heard about the new Bondi New York Box, I signed up for a 3 month subscription. Boxes are $19.99 a month and longer subscriptions offer discounts (3 months is $10 off, 6 months gets you one month free, and 12 gets you 2 free). They also emailed everyone who subscribed letting us know we could buy a single second box for $15 (guaranteed to be different from your subscription box), so I figured why not? Boxes come with 3 full sized polishes, a deluxe beauty product, and a 25% discount and free shipping on any polish purchases you want to make. Although this first box was a total mystery box, future boxes will have previews and you'll be able to skip if you don't like a particular month. I like that feature. I have lots of polish. I don't need a ton of dupes.

To keep the post from getting too long, I'll review each box separately, even though they arrived on the same day.

Opening the box

Note - no info on the products, but a cute note

The 3 colors I got were Fuschia-istic (hot pink), Brick Road (warm yellow), and City Slicker (shimmery dark gray).

Bondi Fuschia-istic

Bondi Brick Road

Bondi City Slicker

Sort of hard to see, but here's where the polish drained. Thankfully, the packing held it all in.

Hmm, what's wrong with these last 2 pictures, you ask? Yup, broken polish. :( Apart from the squiggly confetti, the polishes were only wrapped in thick brown packing paper. This one cracked halfway around and leaked into the box. Thankfully, nothing else was ruined and it didn't leak beyond the box, but still a huge bummer as this looked like it would be my favorite shade of the 3. I emailed them right away (late at night) and got a message first thing in the morning promising me a replacement was being sent out immediately and asking if anything else was damaged and needed replacing. As promised, later in the week, my replacement came and was undamaged, although packed exactly the same way. I'm pleased with customer service, but I do hope they'll change up their packing strategy. They emailed everyone with an apology about tracking difficulties, but I wonder if anyone else's polish broke.

Anyway, the polishes seem nice. The formulas on all 3 of these were smooth and easy to apply. Brick Road was a tad thin, but after an extra coat (3 vs the 2 for the other shades I got), it looked good finished. Fuschia-istic was similar to Julep's Raegan, but a tad darker - I have to swatch it next to a few other Julep pinks I have that are all fairly similar to each other to see if one of the others is closer. I really don't need so many similar pinks though, so that was kind of a bummer. This is why I'm glad they'll have previews and skipping in the future.  Like Fuschia-istic, Brick Road had a near-match in Julep's Lexie, although Brick Road is a tad warmer. The problem here is that I finally tried a mostly yellow manicure last week and these yellows are not my color - I looked at it and immediately removed it. They just really don't go with my skin tone. I can keep one or 2 around for detail colors, but again, I don't need a handful of similar colors, especially in a yellow that doesn't work well on me. On the upside, City Slicker is unique to my collection (my closest color is probably Julep's Brit, but that's kind of a stretch because Brit is a matte with black particles in it), so that's a plus, and it's really pretty.

Bondi Fuschia-istic and Julep Raegan

Bondi Brick Road and Julep Lexie

My bonus beauty product turned out to be 2 items - a small Love & Toast perfume in Honey Coconut ($9) and a 100% Pure lip glaze in Fruit Punch ($15). The perfume was ok - I generally like sweet perfumes, but this one gave me a bit of a headache. The lip glaze was a colored lip balm - it was not as opaque as a lipstick, so a bit more usable for me, but once again, I'm not a lip girl. So, for this box, my beauty bonuses were a little lackluster for me.

Honey Coconut perfume - cute bottle, but I don't really like the lack of sprayer or rollerball. I can see myself accidentally dousing myself in this.

100% Pure lip balm - the spilled polish only affected the outer plastic wrap

Swatch of the lip balm

August 2013 Bondi New York box

I thought this was a decent first box. The broken polish was a bummer, and again, I hope they change up their packing a bit, but the problem was very easy to fix with their very nice customer service. The formula of the polish is nice, but again, I'm looking forward to previews so I can avoid dupes. I'm kind of hoping for some colors that are a bit more unique. Like that beautiful sparkly burgundy color in my Square Hue box. Either way, I signed up for 3 months (I believe we get a reminder email when it's about to end - it doesn't just automatically resubscribe you for another 3 months. That's a huge plus.), so we'll see how it goes and I'll evaluate at the end on whether I want to continue.

If you got a Bondi box this month, what colors did you get? If you'd like to sign up, go to their website here!

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