A while back, a friend introduced me to a fun website called Influenster. Basically, you can register with them and earn badges in a variety of interest areas, if you are someone who uses social media or blogs a lot. They send boxes of free, full-sized samples based on your badges, with the hopes that you will review products and talk or write about them. So yeah, it's a form of advertising.
Well, it sounded like fun, and you get free stuff. Sign me up. I got my first VoxBox in June, and this is really the first chance I've had to write about it, though I have been using the products. I received the following goodies:
Meaningful Beauty by Cindy Crawford - Complete Skincare Kit Garden Botanika - Anti-Aging Lip Treatment Pure Silk - Raspberry Shaving Cream Montagne Jeunesse - Green Tea Face Mask Diamancel - Diamond Flexible Nail File Softsoap - Pampered Hands Foaming Soap
This isn't a beauty blog, but I do occasionally write about fashion and I do occasionally review products, so why not a little foray into beauty? I haven't tried the nail file, but here are my thoughts on the other items.
Softsoap Pampered Hands Foaming Soap -- this is a pleasant, light, raspberry scent. It foams, it cleans your hands, it's in one of those convenient little bottles you can put right next to the sink. What else is there to say? It's a fine product. Me, I buy my cheap handsoap in bulk from Sam's Club and put it in attractive dispensers. It's all about the packaging.
Montagne Jeunesse Green Tea Face Mask --- this is a light gel mask. I prefer clay masks, and this one had an oppressively strong scent. It did peel off easily and left my skin feeling smooth.
Pure Silk Raspberry Shaving Cream --- I don't normally use shaving cream, but I have to admit --- not only does this smell nice, but it really did give me a closer shave and made my legs feel deliciously silky and smooth. Perhaps I should change my mind.
Garden Botanika Anti-Aging Lip Treatment --- At this stage in the game, I'm pretty much a sucker for anything that could slow the march of time across my face. My lips are not one of the problem areas, but I like to put a lil' somethin'-somethin' on them at bedtime. This is a thick, clear, unscented gel which comes in a little pot. It is quite greasy, not unlike Vaseline, but thicker. I think it would be great for winter, and perhaps applied over lipstick with a brush, but it's a little much for summertime. As for its anti-aging properties, honestly, I can't see any difference after using it for several weeks.
Meaningful Beauty by Cindy Crawford --- these are nice products, all unscented. The cleanser is mild and does a good job of removing everything except eye makeup, leaving your skin feeling soft and clean. The Antioxidant Day Creme has an SPF of 20 --- I prefer higher --- but is very light and won't leave you feeling goopy. The Anti-Aging Night Creme has almost a whipped consistency, but very creamy without feeling heavy. There's a nice decolletage creme, an eye-lifting cream (which doesn't address my main issue, dark circles, and after several weeks of use, I see no particular change to the eye area), and my favorite, the Wrinkle Smoothing Capsules. I am more of a sagger than a wrinkler, and I mainly like these because of the consistency of the product. It's a powdery gel that goes on very smoothly, similar to my favorite primers, and it just feels good. I see no change to the wrinkles I do have. The kit also includes a nice, light clay mask and a small bottle of "glowing serum" which is just moisturizer infused with light-reflecting particles --- a product of which I am a big fan, as it really does seem to give your skin a glow, but this one comes in a tiny bottle and I think I can do better, price-wise, with my usual Laura Mercier tinted moisturizer, which also has an SPF and can be used as a light base.The kit price isn't bad, either: about $40 plus S&H for all the products; but you have to order them online or through one of her infomercials, and my guess is if you use it all regularly you'd need to reorder once a month.
Conclusion: all pretty nice stuff, especially the Cindy Crawford, nothing that rocks my world. But then I'm sort of a curmudgeon.
Aside from playing with beauty products and going to a costume fitting and rehearsal this evening, I'm enjoying another much-needed very quiet day. Running on adrenaline for so long, you don't realize until you stop how exhausted you really are. So one more day off, and then I plan to start those workouts up again.
The good thing about being 20 miles from stores of any kind is that you don't make any late-night ice cream runs ...
This isn't a beauty blog, but I do occasionally write about fashion, so why not a little foray into beauty products?
Comments