After Christmas I was umm-ing and ahh-ing over whether or not to pre-order the Beautylish Lucky Bag, a once-yearly mystery grab bag of beauty goodies. I remember seeing the bags from last year and being generally unimpressed but my curiosity was still piqued so I placed the $75 (+$5 shipping) order and crossed my fingers for good luck.
Beautylish is based in California and ship out of San Francisco so being a New Yorker, I had to wait a whole week for my bag. I was actively stalking the #Beautylish and #LuckyBag2016 hashtags on Instagram to see what other people were unwrapping. I was generally impressed by the bags I saw on social media. There were Viseart palettes, $20 giftcards and Charlotte Tilbury Bronze & Glow palettes, to name a few of the things I would have liked. Some extra lucky bags even had a full set of Chikuhodo brushes! There were some things that I was hoping I would not find in my bag like the Too Faced Sugar Pop Palette and the Anastasia Beverly Hills Self Made Palette (nothing wrong with the shadows but the colors in those particular palettes just don't suit me). I think it was a little weird for Beautylish to make some bags "extra lucky" because it makes those who got meh bags feel bad. Actually, now that I'm looking at all the bags on Instagram, they all seem to have at least six items whereas mine only had five....
Well, I ended up getting a decent bag. I can't complain. I'm happy to report I can use all the products in this bag and the total retail value is $178.95. Let's take a look at the price breakdown.
Wayne Goss Brow Set $55
Becca Ombré Rouge Eye Palette $40
Kevyn Aucoin The Matte Bronzing Veil in Desert Days $48
IT Cosmetics Bye Bye Pores Pressed Powder $29
Bioderma Sébium H2O (100 ml) $6.95
I love me some Japanese crafted makeup brushes and Wayne Goss is a great person and brand. But $55 for three brow brushes?! I think the price for this is insane and I would have never bought this set on my own. I don't really care too much about my brows but I'm trying to work on that so I guess this set will be useful. Not the most exciting part of my bag but a useful one nonetheless.
Kevyn Aucoin is another stellar high-end beauty brand and I was excited to see a cheek product. This is supposed to be a bronzer but it's so warm and orange that there's no way this would look good on my skin tone as a bronzer. I'll try using this as a blush and see how that fares. The powder itself is smooth and easily blendable so the formulation is spot on.
The highlight of the box was the Becca eyeshadow palette. I've had my eye on this palette and think it's a pretty awesome travel companion because you have all your neutral beiges and browns in one place. This is the warmer and redder of the two palettes Becca does. I would have preferred the neutral toned palette but I think this one will be just fine on the eyelids. The shadows are pigmented but kind of crumbling in an odd way. When I dipped my finger in to swatch these, the powder kind of balled up. That's not something that I usually experience but I'm not particularly upset about it.
The last two products are a translucent powder from It Cosmetics, which is not exciting but certainly something I'll save in my stash for when I finish a powder, and a mini bottle of Bioderma Sébium. I love the regular Bioderma Crealine in the red bottle so I'm interested to see if this one is noticeably different. I'll probably save it for use in the summer when my skin is more oily.
I think my $80 was decently spent but my bag didn't knock my socks off. The waiting and hoping for good items caused more stress than I would like to admit. For the simple reason that I can't keep my cool and am an overly anxious person, I won't be participating in mystery bags like these. There is too much of a chance that I'll get something I already have or something I won't use at all. Here's to spending money on the things I know I will love and use!