I received my Julep Maven boxes just in time for Halloween! If you read my last entry, you'll notice I said I got the American Beauty box, despite putting in a shelf pull for the Classic with a Twist.
Unfortunately, even though my invoice stated that it was changed, it wasn't. Luckily, I really love the color Trina in person, so it's okay. The company contacted me and if I end up getting the Classic with a Twist box, I will definitely post photos and swatches for you all!
If you're not sure what the Julep Maven program is, here's a link to my post detailing the program. If you would like to go sign up, or check it out, here's the link for the Julep Website!
One thing I noticed this month is that the boxes that the products are sent in are much more appropriately sized. They're at least 50% smaller, and there is no gift bag inside anymore. Personally I am super pleased about that, because I have about 6 of those gift bags sitting around. I feel bad recycling them,instead of using them, but the only way I'd give a gift in them is if it were a Julep product. They would be good for a kids project of recovering them though.
This month, they switched to shredded black paper, and purple tissue surrounding everything, which was packed inside the absolutely adorable and beautiful cosmetic bag. It's a gorgeous cosmetic bag, that's got little pockets to hold lipgloss/lipsticks, or whatever else. The zipper is metal! I loathe plastic zippers, so this is a huge plus for me. It's gorgeous enough that you could easily give a Christmas gift inside of it, and then wrap the whole thing in a box. I tried to take a photo of it, but my camera is having troubles right now and it wouldn't get it. I'm going to try again tomorrow, hopefully with better lighting!
Now on to the details of each one!
American Beauty: This month, American Beauty comes with a bottle of Trina. It's definitely eggplant purple as they say, but it's got a bit of a shimmer to it. It's a beautiful color for sure. One coat was not enough to get opaque coverage for me. I took a photo so you could see.
The lipgloss is Arousal, a neutral, rosy-brown with pink pearl. These are more of a shimmer frost finish. I don't mind it but I know many people aren't fans of frost lipproducts. The color is very warm. Swatching it, it came out a really pretty golden bronzey pink. The smell of this product is familiar to me, but odd. I can't quite place it. If you don't like heavily scented products, this might bother you.
I haven't worn it yet to see if it's moisturizing or not, I'll let you know.
Boho Glam:
This one, I was a little scared of. Yellow green is a scary color to me. I got it because I like to challenge my color horizons. Unfortunately, as cool as this looks in the bottle, it looks terrible on me. My skintone is NW15 for reference. It looks almost like highlighter yellow, or pea soup. I think this would be gorgeous on someone with a darker skintone. The coverage is great, it only took 1 coat to get a totally opaque coat. I really wanted this one to work on me, but it just doesn't. I'm going to see if I can put Sienna over it and somehow make it work.
The lipgloss in this style profile is in the color Extravagant: warm pearlized golden bronze. This one really is super close to Arousal, it's just missing the pink part. It has the same scent, and frost shimmer. I didn't find the texture to be too sticky, but it was a little bit to me.
I love the cosmetic bag, and the lipgloss in this set, and the nail polish is great except that the color looks terrible on me. That's not Juleps fault though, I think this is just one of those tricky colors to pull off and I don't have the skintone to do it.
Here are swatches of the lipglosses on my hand, so you can see how they look. I personally found the colors in the tube to be totally accurate as to how they looked. The formula is a little on the thick side, slightly sticky, and kind of heavily scented. So just be aware of that! They remind me of the texture of the Victoria's Secret lipglosses that come in the squeeze tubes. Again, sorry, my camera is having troubles. But as you can see, neither color is very dark, and they're both extremely similar to one another. They're both very shimmery bronze neutrals. I'm going to do better swatches earlier in the day.
Just for comparisons sake, since I know people are curious, I put Blake and Selena next to one another, and Gayle and Trina, just so that people could see the difference between them directly.
As you can see, Blake is much more of a bright buttery yellow, whereas Selena is darker, and more pea soup green. They both have the same exact creme finish, and opacity.
Trina is much darker than Gayle, and they have completely different finishes. Gayle is a creme finish, and very opaque. Trina has the same finish as Zoe and Boris & Nicole have, that sort of metalic sheen. It's not opaque and would take at least two coats for complete coverage.
Again, huge apologies for my super blurry photos. My digital camera was having problems focusing. Hopefully I can save up and get a new one soon, so that my photos are much clearer for you guys!
Thank you so so much for reading, and I hope that you all have a great Halloween!
Stay tuned tomorrow for my huge huge giveaway announcement! I promise it'll be worth it!
