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Check My Box: Sephora PLAY! September 2018

I wouldn’t say this was the most exciting Sephora PLAY! Box  of all time, but it was a pretty solid delivery, with some good basic products. The theme for this month was “Next Gen Beauty” (I don’t get it, necessarily, because some of these are pretty old school products, but as I have said before, I am super glad that I am not in charge with coming up with monthly themes for boxes. So leeway.)

My first item was something that I have used for years OLEHENRIKSEN Truth Serum. This is a nice, hydrating Vitamin-C day serum. It feels nice enough on the face, but I have moved on to other products, and truthfully I never saw much difference with this product one way or the other, I mostly used it because it came in kits with other products I wanted, like the Sheer Perfection moisturizer, which is my go-to.


Next up was Clinique Dramatically Different Hydrating Jelly

Am I the only weirdo who doesn’t want to put something on their face that’s described as a jelly? Is the whole jelly thing borrowed from K-beauty? I dunno, sounds weird.

Using this, the clear gel-like consistency and the complete lack of any scent or color makes me think very strongly of lube. Which, OK, I guess it is lube for your face. But I don’t wanna put lube on my face. It just has a gross feel/look to it, to me. YMMV. It was lightly hydrating and not sticky, thank goodness.


Then we have TOO FACED Hangover Replenishing Primer.

I have used this before and liked it, although I prefer the Peter Thomas Roth mattifying primer nowadays. This might be more of an option for the winter months. I don’t need a lot of hangover proofing anymore, but this is a solid product and I will definitely use it.

Wait, scratch that. I just did a “face of the day” to use all these products at once, and this tube smells terrible. Ugh, like old plastic and a chemical factory. No. This is awful. I wonder if the whole lot went off somehow? I have had samples of this before that didn’t smell that way. Straight to the garbage for this vial.


Next up –  Marc Jacobs Shameless Youthful Look 24-H Foundation. Now, this stuff won an Allure award, and I really do not understand how. It just sits funny on my skin. I will include a photo here, not because I want to, but because it’s necessary to show you this. I blended, and blended and blended this stuff. I used a damn beauty blender, because I much prefer the look that gives, and also because I hate when I blend with a brush and it leaves brush lines.

With this foundation, the flipping beauty

blender left brush lines! No kidding. See how it sank into the pores on my nose, settled in to the crease by my nose, and then still did not set on the side of my nose, so that 10 minutes after I applied it my glasses left that mark? What’s with the mark, Marc? And naturally a Marc Jacobs game charges a Marc Jacobs price – and he wants $46 for this stuff.

Hard pass from me on this one.

 


I don’t think this is even showing how gloopy it is on the wand.

Finally we get to the one thing that makes me go “hmmm.” Anybody else feel a little ripped off when you get a Sephora branded item in your box? That’s probably too dramatic of a response, but I was really like – “Oh, OK Sephora. Whatever!” When I saw their mascara in there. It just feels like more of a budget option, and not the reason I signed up for this box. OK Susan, get over it, it’s $10.

Annnnnyway. This is their Sephora Lashcraft Big Volume Mascara. I had low hopes, and all those hopes were met!

It glops up the wand with big chunks of goo, it goes on gloopy and it wears off really quickly, giving me panda eyes! And I tested it not once, but twice! For you people!

Here it is at 9a.m. – nothing special, but passable.
Here it is at 4:57 p.m., completely worn off and helpfully deposited in my eye bags.

So here’s my face of the day, with moisture jelly and hangover goo and bunchy foundation and gloopy mascara and it ain’t all good, I can tell you. And I have to SEE people later.

So there we go! We get to the end of another box review and I sound like a crabby old biddy who hates everything! And it’s fair! Right now I DO kind of hate everything! Or more like I don’t have any time and patience for things that don’t work, or don’t work well, or are overpriced for what they deliver. And you know as a lady in America right this moment, what with a rapist just installed on the Supreme Court and a repulsive sleazebucket serial sexual harasser for a president, there’s really a hard cap on the shit I am willing to put up with, you know? In rosier times maybe I would let a thing or two slide, but letting shit slide hasn’t worked out so well for us ladies, now has it? So demand excellence from everything, call out bullshit, and throw away any product that smells bad, reminds you of KY, or gives you panda eyes.  Fin.

ETA: Oh wait oh wait! I thought of something I liked! They actually did away with the cutesy fabric bags this month, and did a nice plastic resealable bag, which I think would be nice for travel/things that spill. Well done on that front.

New bags are an improvement.

So whatcha, whatcha, whatcha think? Did you get this box and love it better than I did? Do you love/hate/disregard any of these products? Let me know in the comments!

1 Comment

  • Post Author
    Susan
    Posted October 12, 2018 at 7:13 pm

    Just a little test-a-roo on the comment section. Bueller? Bueller?

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