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Julep March 2014 Review

You guys, I have big news. I didnt upgrade my Julep box this month. I am sure you are all very proud.

The products in this months box were kind of underwhelming (I dont need an overly expensive lip balm, guys) and, although the nail polishes were pretty, bright colors, I wasnt exactly drooling on my keyboard over them. I opted instead to pick up the Boho Glam box.


For March, Julep released new shades of their lip glosses. They sent out the last batch in November, and I was pleasantly surprised by their quality. I actually probably would have upgraded my box if they had had an option that contained all the new glosses... but they didnt, and I didnt want to individually add on every color. Happily, though, they did have some extra customization options: the boxes that contained lip glosses allowed you to choose which gloss you received.

I did get an extra this month: a cotton-candy-flavored candy stick. I had kind of assumed that Julep had just stopped adding the little bonus items, since I havent been receiving them, but its possible that theyre just not including them in the upgraded boxes, which would be an awfully strange choice.

Boho Glam contained Elisa, a cool, pastel lilac with faintest hint of shimmer, and Harriet, a medium coral cream. Both colors are opaque in about two coats.


I was really happy with the two colors. I also really like them together-- Im a big fan of mixing cool and warm-toned colors and these go together really nicely.


I chose to get the lipgloss in the shade "Enchanted". It was exactly what I was expecting, since Ive tried Julep lip glosses before. Its wearable, medium-ly sheer, and just a tiny bit sticky.


Enchanted is a watermelon-y coral color.


Heres how it looks on my lips:



Overall, Im relatively happy. Im rarely really disappointed in Julep because, at this point, I usually have a pretty damn good idea about what Im going to be getting. I like it, and Ill definitely wear this stuff. I wish this box had a new product to get excited about or colors that would blow me away. It didnt. But, hey, at least its solid.

If you suddenly decided that you need to join Julep, youre welcome to use my referral link by clicking here. Dont forget to use the code FREEBOX to get, well, a free box. (Your first box is free save for shipping.)

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Julep December 2013 Review

I upgraded my Julep box again this month. Again, I would not have chosen to do so if I didnt have the Jules (points) to do it for free. Im super happy that I did, though, since there is not a single thing in this box that I didnt like at all. (Typically, Julep would cost $20 and an upgrade would be an additional $35 on top.)

Julep also opened up a bunch of new box options this month, presumably with the intention of luring in frequent-skippers.


The bonus item this month was a non-Julep brand name product, which totally caught me by surprise. I own a few twistbands already, although none were acquired intentionally. I thought that this was a really nice inclusion by Julep.


Julep also included a 40% off coupon (which I am totally going to use).


Nail Polish


I nail polishes that I received included:

Mia (Classic With a Twist) - A silver metallic with a slight green tint.
Cara (Bombshell) - A cross between a hot pink and a red with a frosty finish. (This is my favorite of the lot.)
Jillian (Classic With a Twist) - A rich, deep red.
Evelyn (It Girl) - Magenta cream.
Celia (It Girl) - Mermaid in nail polish form.
Shoshanna (It Girl) - A dirty-looking, greenish yellow glitter.
Misti (Boho Glam) - Blue/gray.
Joelle (Boho Glam) - A silver glitter.
Andrea (Bombshell) - A gold glitter.

Im really excited about all of the colors. Theyre all really fun and unique. I think that this is the best color selection that Julep has released.

So far, Ive paired Cara (opaque in one coat) and Andrea (opaque in two coats) for my first seriously-it-looks-like-the-holidays nails of the season.


Eyeshadow Palette

I didnt have very high hopes for the Julep "Sweep Eyeshadow Palette". I found the colors on the website to be really uninspiring. Furthermore, I feel that Julep doesnt really throw their energy behind all of their makeup releases, meaning that many of them are shoddy quality. After testing the palette, though, I was pleasantly surprised. The palette is certainly (in my opinion) flawed, but I feel totally comfortable endorsing the quality of the eyeshadow.


The first flaw is evident the moment you pull the palette out of its unnecessarily bulky packaging: each of the eyeshadows is teensy weensy, at 0.02 oz. Thats smaller than the eyeshadows that come in Coastal Scents palettes. The total palette has a net weight of only 0.1 oz. At Juleps full-retail price of $24, thats a whopping $240 per ounce. I usually view $100 per ounce as a reasonable per-ounce eyeshadow palette price. (At the Maven price of $19.20, the eyeshadow is $192 per ounce.)


The second flaw, in my opinion, is the color scheme. The theme of this month is GLITTERATI, for fucks sake! How could you product a color scheme that is so utterly boring?! The palest shade, Tiramisu, is too dark to be an effective highlight, and it has a weird yellow tone to it that isnt particularly flattering. If Im doing a neutral eye, my highlight need not be twelve shades darker than my skin. The next shade, Glow, is a shimmering, neutral bronze. Its my favorite color in the palette. Dusk is the coolest shade. Its a brown with slight mauve tones. Next comes Toffee, a medium brown, and Cocoa, a very similar medium brown. I dont find the swatches on the Julep website to be true to color. I think they really emphasize the differences in the shadows. When you actually see them, though, several of the shades look very similar and are clearly redundant (my swaches below are true to color). Additionally, without a good highlight, these colors dont provide a lot of flexibility. They needed to pull out two of those three near-identical browns and replace them with a very dark brown and a pearly white highlight.

Im also baffled by the eyeshadow names. Three of the four are dessert-themed, but "Glow" and "Dusk" are not. I kind of wish that they had embraced the "tiramisu" idea, called it the Tiramisu Palette, and named the colors accordingly. In my hypothetical improved palette, the fictional pearl could be called "Cream". What is now Tiramisu could be called "Ladyfingers". Glow could be called "Rum". We could keep Cocoa. My fictional dark color could be called "Espresso".

BAM. Superior product conceptualized.

Julep Sweep Eyeshadow Palette Swatches

The shadows themselves, though? Theyre fabulous. I was expecting them to be chalky and unpleasant, but theyre smooth and buttery. They are, dare I say it, reminiscent of the best LORAC eyeshadows.

Julep Sweep Eyeshadow Palette on Human Face

 Eyeshadow Primer


The eyeshadow primer is thick and gooey, almost like youre rubbing frosting on your face. It applies with a doe-foot applicator that is weirdly floppy.


I did a quick four-hour test using Benefits Stay Dont Stray, a medium-performing primer, and NARS Smudgeproof (the winner of my eyeshadow primer comparison, which you can find here) as yardsticks.


From left to right, I have my control swatch, the Julep Primer, Benefits Stay Dont Stray, and NARS Smudgeproof. I used Cocoa from the Julep Eyeshadow Palette for the test. The initial swatches showed that Julep definitely did intensify the color, but not as much as NARS. It also changed the color of the eyeshadow slightly, cooling it down.


After four hours, it was clear that Julep performed comparably to Benefits Stay Dont Stray, meaning that it would qualify as a "medium performing" eyeshadow primer.


This is a totally adequate performance.

If you have discovered your new-found dream of being a Julep Maven subscriber, you are welcome to use my referral link here. Dont forget to use the code FREEBOX to get your first box for free!

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Julep February 2014 Review

A Prequel to the Review

Before I begin reviewing Februarys box, I feel the need to explicitly acknowledge a change in Juleps subscription model. In the past, one of the selling points of Julep is that you can skip whenever you want. If you subscribed before December 18th, that hasnt changed. If you subscribed after December 18th... well, that sucks. You now can only skip every six months. This is a huge bummer for people who might not have the budget to spend $20 every single month on nail polish. I do understand the change in policy (my guess is that they have a lot of people who skip every single month, and then take advantage of Juleps sales and free shipping by every-so-often ordering something that costs, like, a dollar), but I think that they could have allowed more flexibility than one skip per six months. Maybe a rule like you cant skip twice in a row or something like that. I also really dont like the way that they handled the change; I think they should have given fair warning to people who were considering subscribing by letting people know, "Our policy will change in one week" or something like that, so that people could still scramble to subscribe under the old rules. I also really dont like the fact that they are framing the change as "simplifying the skip feature" when anyone who looks at the situation understands that "I can skip whenever I want" is more simple than "I can earn skips by not skipping boxes some months and not skipping a box earns me a credit for 1/6 of a box skip at some later date." We all understand why you are change the skip feature, Julep. Pretending its "simplifying" things is insulting our intelligence. Its not necessarily an unreasonable change, but please be honest. The final thing that rubs me the wrong way about the change is that, as far as I know, people who subscribed between December 18th and the announcement on January 16th did not get any warning that they were signing up for something different than what they thought they were signing up for. If you happen to be in that boat, I would strongly recommend emailing Juleps customer service and requesting that you be given the "old" skipping rules.

Ive also been asked to comment on Juleps new Plie wand, a magnetic attachment to the Julep nail polishes that will allow a lot more dexterity when painting nails. I think its an awesome idea and I look forward to its release in May. The two commonly expressed complaints are that 1. They are asking people to "crowdfund" the project by pre-ordering their May boxes now and 2. If you want to use it on any pre-May 2014 Julep polishes, youll need to order new magnetic caps for your old polishes. To me, these are non-issues. Although Julep is asking you to pre-order your box... you can just not do it. Im not pre-ordering, and I fully expect that I will have access to the Plie wand when it is released. If you dont want to pre-order, dont do it. The magnetic caps issue doesnt bother me for similar reasons: just dont buy any new caps. Starting in May 2014, all of Juleps caps will work with the Plie wand. Julep caps pop off the brushes. You can just pop one of your new magnetic caps on an old polish and it will be compatible. Its an extra two seconds of work. If the Plie wand is effective, youll still be coming out ahead.

Aaaand the Review Starts Here

As has been my habit, I upgraded my box this month. Like always, I want to note that I wouldnt upgrade if I was paying out of pocket, since the super-mondo-why-so-fucking-big box I chose would have been a whopping SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS if I paid for it flat. But I used points, which means you readers have way more shit to look at. I dont know which box I would have chosen if Id picked one of the typical $20 boxes.

Here is what I got:

My box included ten nail polishes, a gel liner, an angled brush, four "Eye Sheen" liquid eyeshadows, and a shader brush. I divided up the review below in case you happen to be interested in only some of those topics.


Nail Polish

Although Julep has expanded their box selection significantly in recent months, there are still four boxes that I would consider the "core boxes", which provide all of the polishes for the month: Boho Glam, Classic With a Twist, Bombshell, and It Girl; the former three have two polishes and a product, whereas It Girl has three polishes. That adds up to nine polishes in an upgrade. This month, Julep threw in an extra Valentines-day themed polish called "Love" in each box, meaning that my upgrade contained ten polishes.


The ten polishes--


Octavia (Classic With a Twist): A "smokey indigo crème".
Greta (Classic With a Twist): A "loganberry multidimensional microglitter".
Judi (Bombshell): An "English violet crème".


Roc Solid (It Girl): A "vintage military crème".
Glam Roc (It Girl): A "midnight purple and gold stardust [with] matte glitter".
Diamond Theory (It Girl): A "full-coverage multidimensional copper glitter".


Rooney (Boho Glam): A "walnut bark crème".
Kristen (Bombshell): A "deep sea teal with silver microshimmer".
Cameron (Boho Glam): A "silver lilac stardust [with] matte glitter".


Love: This was a bonus item billed as "Janes gift" that was included in every box. It is a described as a "gold, pearl and fuchsia microglitter". This is my favorite polish in the box; I think it is beautiful. I also love that they added a gold cap (instead of the traditional black caps) to mix things up.

Here is my super-messy-I-cant-do-nail-polish-where-is-that-damn-Plie-wand-when-you-need-it manicure with Octavia and Love:


Eyeliner

The Julep Ink Gel Eyeliner is much softer than any gel eyeliner Ive used in the past. It ends up feeling like a cross between a gel liner and a liquid liner. I actually kind of love this product. The Julep Kajal Pencil liner was a total disaster, so I didnt expect anything more from the gel liner. This is super easy to apply, black as my soul, and dries to a matte, charcoal-like finish.

If you feel that you have to work hard to get crisp lines with gel liner and that liquid liner is too easy to accidentally get in your eyelashes, this might be a good solution for you.


Julep is selling this sucker for $22 for 0.15 oz for non- Mavens [people who are not subscribed to the subscription service] ($146.67 per ounce) and $17.60 for Mavens ($117.33 per ounce). For comparison, MAC Fluidline retails for $16 for 0.1oz ($160 per ounce). I think that the price is totally fair, especially given that the quality is high and the product is a little different from most of the other gel liners on the market (because it is so wet).


I was also sent an angled liner brush to go with the gel liner. I thought that this product was pretty nice, as well. The bristles are really sleek, so it makes very clean lines, and it is small enough that you can go pretty thin, if need be. Do you necessarily need this, given the price ($18.00 non-Mavens, $14.50 Mavens)? Probably not. But Julep offers a good brush/eyeliner duo and gives you a discount, it works very nicely with the gel liner.

Just be careful to clean out the bristles after each use. Once the liner dries on the brush, its a bit of a pain to get out!


Eyeshadow

I also got four "Eye Sheens". After the Julep Sweep Eyeshadow palette from December turned out to be unprecedentedly fantastic, I was really excited to try what I assumed were cream eyeshadows from Julep. (The reason that I ungraded to such a ridiculous extent was because this was the only box that gave me the option of trying all four Eye Sheens.)


The Eye Sheens retail for $18.00 for the general population and $14.50 for Mavens and contain 0.15oz of product. That means that they cost $120 per ounce for non-Mavens and $96.67 per ounce for Mavens. This is actually not particularly expensive. For comparison, the Benefit Creaseless Cream Eyeshadows are $20 for 0.16oz, or $125 per ounce. (Although, true to form, Julep unnecessarily packaged the shadows in ridiculously large boxes.)

To pair with the shadows, Julep also sent out their eye shader brush. The brush is too small, stiff, and strangely shaped to be great for powder shadows and its totally rubbish at blending, but it works pretty nicely for slapping on some Eye Sheens.


The Eye Sheens were totally not what I was expecting at all. I was expecting the texture of a traditional cream eyeshadow. They are labeled as "liquid eyeshadows", although they are not liquid. In terms of consistency, they are really more along the lines of a "pudding eyeshadow". Heres what it looks like when I lightly pat the top of one of the shadows with the shading brush:

Patting Juleps Deep Bronze Shimmer.

In other words, WHAT THE FUCK.

Happily, the actual effect is kind of fabulous. A single swipe of product is incredibly pigmented. It dries quickly and, once it dries, it stays put. Cream products are usually a little more likely to slip and slide around; these definitely will not.

The four Eye Sheen shades are as follows:

Dusty Taupe Shimmer is a pink-toned taupe.
Pale Nude Shimmer is a light golden color.
Deep Bronze Shimmer is dark bronze akin to a very dirty penny.
Warm Fig Shimmer is a medium-dark dusty purple.

From left to right: Dusty Taupe, Pale Nude, Deep Bronze, and Warm Fig

The one disadvantage of their serious staying power is that these require a bit of patience to really blend. (I actually think the promo photo on Juleps blog here has kind of terrible blending going on, so even Julep had trouble getting them blended out appropriately.) Its not impossible to do, but I can see it being really frustrating for people who arent very comfortable with eyeshadow. If thats you, I would recommend using the Eye Sheen on your lid and choosing a traditional powder eyeshadow for your crease. Just for your sanity.

Time to see how all this shit looks on my face!

This look has Pale Nude Shimmer on my lid, Deep Bronze Shimmer on my crease, and the Julep Ink Gel Eyeliner as a tightline:


This look has Dusty Taupe Shimmer on my lid, Warm Fig Shimmer in my crease, and the Julep Ink Gel Eyeliner as a chunky wing:


Overall, I am happy with this box. The nail polish colors are all pretty and the eyeshadows look lovely, even if they are a bit of a pain to work with. The Ink Gel Eyeliner, though, was definitely the shining star of this box!

If you decide that subscribing to Julep would give you oodles of joy, you are always welcome to use my referral link by clicking here.

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Julep January 2014 Review

I live in Washington state, so my Julep box doesnt need to travel very far to reach me. I got this buttloads of time ago. Julep wasnt tardy; I am.

The theme of this box was "The Boudoir Collection", which I only feel the need to point out because clearly the Julep creative team and I are shopping at different lingerie stores. (The last bra I bought was this hot pink and yellow monstrosity by Mimi Holliday. I think Julep has to release a leopard print nail polish before they can truly claim to be underwear-themed.) BUT HEY, I can still appreciate a good lavender satin.

As has been my pattern, I chose to upgrade my box. And, as has been my pattern, I feel that I should note that I wouldnt have upgraded if I didnt have the points to do so for free.

My upgrade included nine nail polishes, quick-dry nail polish drops, and a cuticle softener.

Nail Polish


The nine nail polishes in the collection include:

Mae is a cool, dusty lavender color. Its described as a "Satin" but its nothing like any satin that Ive ever seen. It reminds me of the Illamasqua rubber-finish nail polishes more than anything.

Farrah is the grayer, shimmery version of Mae.

Noelle is a shimmery, soft taupe.

Annemarie is sort of a "mauve meets milk chocolate". This is definitely the least romantic color in the collection.

Hope is a snowy white.

Hannah is a muted sage.

Mona is a dark, smokey gray.

Abigail is a shimmery scallop-pink.

Margot is a full-on glitter gold!

Here are my messy nails, featuring Farrah and Mae:

Julep Farrah and Mae

Ta Da! Quick Dry Drops

I was kind of expecting the quick dry drops to be really boring, but I was pleasantly surprised. They dont seem to do their job any better than a drugstore product, but they smell fucking awesome. The inclusion of rosewood oil,  lavender oil, and ylang ylang oil means that this product smells like an aromatherapy shop.


Shockingly, its actually not even very expensive. This product is a full fluid ounce, twice the size of a standard nail polish bottle. (Given the teeny weeny sizes of Julep nail polishes, this is particularly shocking.) This product is $14.00 for non-subscribers and $11.20 for Mavens. For comparison, the Essie Quick-E Drying drops are $14.95 for 0.5 fluid ounces, or $29.90 per fluid ounce. Thats more than two and half times the Maven price, ounce per ounce.

Vanish Cuticle Softener and Remover

So, I hear were supposed to care about our cuticles for some reason. (This is why you should never listen to my nail polish advice. I have no idea what I am talking about.) I heard on the grapevine that if you paint your nails over your cuticles, the polish doesnt last as long and also... is ugly.


This product is sort of a milky substance that you can drop on your nails and it will, in theory, let you kind of moosh your cuticles out of the way. As someone who habitually does my nails in the bathtub, I didnt see any difference between this product and regular old water.

Overall, Im pretty happy with my Julep box. It could have been a little bit more exciting, but the nail polishes and the quick dry drops are both solid and Ill definitely use them. The cuticle softener, if Im being totally honest, will probably just live a sad, lonely life under my bathroom sink.

If you have suddenly decided that subscribing to Julep is an awesome idea, you are always welcome to use my referral link by clicking here. The code FREEBOX or FREECOLOR will get you your first box for free.

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