The Battle of the Czech May "Beauty Boxes" - Greatbox, Ladybox and Senzabox

I always envied people in the foreign countries when it came to beauty boxes. The idea of getting samples of high-end products together with some full-sized ones appealed to me because trying something first before investing into it seemed like a good idea. It has happened to me a couple of times that I bought something expensive and then I found it was a piece of crap despite the reviews. 

So when I learned that this service appeared in the Czech Republic, I was ecstatic :-)= But as every brain user, I waited for a couple of months because I know Czech mentality - stealing is the name of the game here. So I was pretty certain some boxes would give people just worthless stuff for their money. Which actually happened. But it's been a couple of months since the beginning of the "beauty box mania" and the boxes had to undergo a lot of changes after customers complained for various reasons. The boxes evolved and I decided to buy all the three which are on the market and make a review.

So what are my expectations? I hope I will get samples of high-end products or of those which can be only bought on the internet plus some natural stuff (some of the boxes are advertising their cooperation with cruelty-free, paraben-free and just everything-evil-free brands)  - I really hope there won't be much of the usual drugstore stuff because anyone has an access to that so it would be pointless... Well, let's see.

Greatbox

The very first arrival was Greatbox. I was shocked at first because the box was broken and its content was in the envelope it came in (I was wondering why the envelope, now I know why). So the first impression was kinda tragic.

 But after getting all the products out I was nicely surprised. There were 4 full-sized products and 4 samples which is way more than I expected! What I missed, however, was that explaining letter (not that I ever read such things but it's nice to know they took the time to write something about the products). Plus I'm sure there are tons of people out there who can't speak German or English, so they may not be able to decipher what the foreign products are for.

 The very first full-sized product is, I guess, a surprise product - Greatbox decided to make their own orange-flavored lip balm. I'm a sucker for lip balms, so yay! There's never enough of those.

 Another nice surprise came in the guise of Lavera lip gloss. I'm not a fan of lip glosses because they tend to be "drooly" - you know, when you apply it, after ten minutes it starts slowly going down and you have it on your chin. I applied this one and it stayed in place. So maybe there is a chance for me in restoring my faith in lip gloss after all.

 Ok, now souffle is something I bake and enjoy eating and there is no way I'd like to smear it all over my body (unless there was someone to lick it from me, but that's another story). But Fleur de Santé thinks otherwise and gave me the whole product scented with raspberry. I suck at using body creams so I guess this will last me a year. But it smells nice.

Now, there's a cheap drugstore stuff! I knew it! Bione Cosmetics is a Czech company making a really cheap stuff with natural ingredients. Doesn't sound that bad, huh? But the problem is I love natural stuff and I love putting it in my hair, so I've already had this birch tree tonic or whatever it is. It's supposed to be massaged into your hair and scalp and not washed (claiming it will boost the volume of your hair and make it more shiny). Result? More greasy-looking hair than ever. But since it contains so much good stuff I use it before washing my hair as a mask.

 And now the samples. This is exactly what I was talking about - not a single word in Czech. But I can clearly see it's a Lavera day cream with organic white tea (yay for tea in any form!) and karanja oil. Well, I don't really use creams (the same problem as with body creams - ain't nobody got time for that), so I'm happy it's only a sample.

Another sample is by CHI and it says it's a pearl complex treatment perfect for hair and skin. Hmm, gotta google that because there is no mentioning how to use that. Shame on you Greatbox!  

Again, Lavera cream sample. This time, it is mattifying balancing cream. Sounds good for someone like me because I've got oily skin. But again, it's a cream and I'm terribly forgetful at putting that on my face.

And last, but not least is something I've been dying to try but never got the nerve to spend so much money on it - Saloos's rosewood hydrophilic make-up remover. It says only a couple of drops will remove even waterproof make-up. Can't wait to try this.

To sum my very first Greatbox up, I was gladly surprised by the quality of the products. Lavera and Saloos are a high-end natural cosmetic brands I love, so I'm happy to try something else from them. I'm also OK with the hair products, because I love to put nutrition in my hair :-D=. So all in all, it wasn't as bad as I thought - most of the bloggers say this one is the worst of the three boxes, but this month was quite awesome.
What I find convenient is Greatbox website. The description of the products appeared there so now I finally know how to use  that CHI miracle :-)=. Some products from the boxes can be bought in their online shop as well as older issues of the boxes - which I find totally awesome (next time I will probably wait till they release a new box, find a blog describing the products and then decide whether to buy it or not - but I will be robbed of the surprise element, I know).

Ladybox

The second box to arrive was Ladybox. This time the box was free of any damage. The box is made of thick cardboard so it screams it should not be thrown away. What I'm gonna do with the disgusting pink, however, remains a mystery. I have found one pretty gross flaw - the products were protected from damage by that worm-like stripes of paper and there were various colors of hair in it. I have an old camera which can't distinguish such a detail so you will be spared of this grossness. I dunno where they make the paper filling, but the seller should employ only people whose hair doesn't fall in such numbers. Or is humans a secret ingredient?  Should I dig for bones?

The very first product I found was a Lambre liquid eyeshadow in nr. 5 brown. When I was ordering the box it asked me if I wanted to have a purple or a brown liquid eyeshadow so I went for this one and I couldn't be happier. It's such a beautiful metallic light brown. I just hope it won't crease much because my greasy complexion doesn't allow me to use anything except normal eyshadows. Jumbo pencils, liquid eyeshadows and stuff like that won't last more that two hours on me. So I'm gonna test this out.

 Iven Cosmetics Collagen cream with elastin and what not would sound really promising if I was my mother or someone older. I'm not sure I should even try it. It smells nice, yup, but what if I apply it and then suddenly turn younger as all these products promise? Will I have to go to kindergarten again?

 Now, this is interesting. Goat's milk mask with cottage cheese and honey by Le Chaton. Wait, did I say honey? Honestly? Ladybox writes in its explanatory letter that this is a personalized product. Which means they gave me this HONEY scented stuff according to a questionnaire I've filled in. I don't remember writing I love honey scent. I told them I love wood and spice based stuff. Not a frickin' honey. Ewww. I've tried the mask on my hand and it felt really good which means whenever I want to use it on my face (yup, right where I conveniently have my nose) I'll have to breathe by my mouth like a weirdo. Well, thank you Ladybox!


Firming butter by Palmer's isn't a surprise. I mean it's a drugstore product and I've already tried some stuff from them, so... well... dunno what to say about it.









Awww, a pelican! This says it's a bath foam and shower gel (I don't trust 2-or-more-in-1 products, by the way) by Duck Island. Wait, is that a duck, then? Smells like something which has heard of mandarine and then tried to fake its smell. And the explanatory letter says these products appear in British hotels. And we can't buy it here. Great. Now I have to hate it otherwise I'll have to travel around British hotels in order to get some more.

 Ha, summer is coming and my hair can't wait to look greasy on me all the time. So this is a perfect time for me to start trying dry shampoos. This one is by Lee Stafford.

 Another Palmer's stuff. Ok, I get it, Ladybox. You are trying to talk me into using body lotions now that I have so many. Extra points for cocoa? I don't know. Usually, smelling cocoa tells my brain CHOCOLATE IS NEAR! and I start salivating. I would make Pavlov's dogs feel ashamed. But it doesn't work here. It rather smells unpleasant.

A toothpaste? Well, I don't think a small sample of toothpaste can be so miraculous that it would convince me to start buying this expensive one instead of the drugstore ones I usually buy, but summer is a time of travelling so I'm happy I don't have to drag along a full-sized one.









So this was the content of Ladybox. I must say I liked it more than Greatbox because it gave me more products I have never heard of (which isn't that difficult - I'm a cosmetic ignorant). I liked I got to choose the color of the eyeshadow and that I had to fill in a questionnaire (even though it didn't really work).
Concerning their website, I was gladly surprised they offer some of the products from their boxes plus you can buy older issues of their boxes if there are any left. Well played, Ladybox ;-)=

 Senzabox
And the last one to arrive was Senzabox. Another for-more-uses box in disgusting pink. I know, these boxes are supposed to be for majority of women which means pink is OK for them. So I should stop complaining. I knew this was coming. This time, nothing was broken, the paper which filled the box was hairfree... So far so good.

The very firs product which I saw was the full-size firming shower gel by Dermacol. You can get this in most drugstores, so I wasn't really happy about that. Plus I'm skeptic when it comes to products which should make you look thinner - honestly, if they worked, wouldn't someone fill a whole swimming pool with it so that people could bathe in it? Just imagine - you jump in as a fat person and come out as a model for fashion magazines? Yeah, right....

 Crazy electric-purple was waiting for me in the box. I saw these new Colorama Maybelline nailpolishes in every drugstore I went in, which means points down. Heck, Senzabox, you should be introducing something we don't know! By the way, I applied it on my nails in two layers (after the first layer was hard, duh!) about 15 minutes ago and I can still see it hasn't hardened yet.

 Yves Rocher isn't something we wouldn't find in most department stores, but at least it's a high-end product, so it's less likely someone has it at home already. Despite me choosing in the Senzabox questionnaire that I only wear natural-looking colors on my eyelids (pinks, browns, bronzes etc), I've got this dark purple color. I must say even though it wasn't something I would go for, I like the color and will try to use it.

 Pomegranate balm sample by Saloos was a nice surprise. Yay for natural cosmetics. It says it should be used for the whole body, but I can clearly see it on my dry elbows or lips :-)=

 And now, here we have a real beauty treasure in the form of a Makeup Forever sample in color nr. 42 :-)= That is so me. I love red lipsticks. This is also the reason why I wasn't happy about the dark eyeshadow - it doesn't go with the red lip. I'll make a post on my red lipsticks somewhere in the near future. But the point is, I haven't got any by Makeup Forever, so I'm happy to try theirs.

 And the last one is a sample by Yves Rocher. It's Beige 200 but due to its very liquidy structure, its not as dark as I feared. I'm on the look for a summer foundation (all my BB creams I use in winter are too pale now) so I'm happy to try this one.









I like this box was focused on the decorative cosmetics, because I' ve got enough body products from the previous boxes. However, I don't really like that Makeup Forever is basically the only product which I can't see in the drugstore - the rest is accessible and therefore boring and less exciting.

So, who wins? I dunno, all the boxes had at least one product I was really happy about, but if I imagine buying them all every month... nope, not gonna work... On average they cost 300 Kč (15 Dollars) and that's too much to pay three times a month. And choosing only one box among the others - well I wouldn't know which to subscribe to. Plus I have the feeling that the products are going to be very similar during the months to come so I would wind up having way too many body lotions, eyeshadows etc. So once in a while it can be fun to buy them but I don't think I will be doing it on regular basis. So maybe, this time next year I'll buy all three again. Just for fun..

Ombre Lips

It seems we've got stuck in an Ombre Period of human history. All websites, magazines, TV commercials, and even everyday people are showing off in their gradient colors. It's only a matter of time when we will be able to buy a puppy of our ombre color choice. 

Even though I now find it a little too much I liked it at the beginning. One of my friends once came with ombre hair which looked fantastic. But I don't have the nerve to let someone cut my hair or even put color into it! I'm saving those dreadful moments for the time when I'm having too much grey hair. Hair was out of question then.
Plus since I only knew the sound of the word ombre, I lived quite long under an impression that it was spelled HOMBRE which was puzzling since I knew this word from Spanish. So.... took me a while to realise Mr Google kept correcting my attempts to find some info on what else I could do with myself.

Tie-dyeing of my clothes was out as soon as I recalled my early experiments with colors and my mother's new expensive curtain mysteriously stained red (I was using colors in the bathroom and kitchen - however, the frickin' red somehow stained the curtain which was near my mother's bedroom - out of my reach, path and everything).

And since I didn't know how to "ombre" myself, my ombre experimenting was solely focused on the lips. Yes, that seemed like a reasonable idea and on the left you can see how it came out.

For the middle part of my lips I used Avon Red2000, the rest of the lips was colored with Manic Panic Black Rose and a tiny part in the corners of my mouth was stained with Fantasy Makers' Black. I applied all these colors with the lipsticks and then used a brush always going in horizontal lines from the corners to the center till I was satisfied with how the colors blended together. I also wiped the brush after getting to the centre and before going to the corner again, so that the center color didn't dilute the corners too much.

Ha, I did it! I officially participated in the ombre frenzy and liked the result! I'm not sure I'm going to do it ever again, but hey, I had fun and that's what counts!