Are you ever surprised by the things that catch your eye?

I don’t wear much makeup. I’m pretty much a lip gloss and mascara gal – on a good day. On a super fancy day, I might be an eyeliner and eye shadow gal too, but by super fancy, I mean, New Year’s Eve or someone’s wedding.

That being said, I have been fascinated by makeup subscription boxes for years.

I know that no small part of this is my love of receiving literally anything in the mail (other than bills).

Well, last year, in the year of YOLO, I subscribed to Ipsy.

I read like a single article comparing the assorted beauty boxes that came in under $15 a month and it pretty much felt like throwing a dart at a dart board based on the reviews.

Ipsy is a personalized make-up subscription service. You receive five sample sized items in a new make-up bag each month. You take a quiz about your skin tone, eye color, how comfortable you are with make-up, and you can pick from some brands you use or you’d like to try. Then you go down a long list of makeup and pick if you’d like to Often, Sometimes, or Rarely receive those items/colors.

I have to say, I don’t regret my splurge.

It was pretty fun to receive the package each month and there was also at least one thing I did really like in each one.

I paid $120 up front, which I certainly had at the time, so it didn’t feel like an irresponsible purchase at all.

But let’s look at a breakdown of what I received for that $120:

But, most importantly, did I like them?

Now, I use the term “like them” to mean, did I want to try it? Would I possibly have picked up something like this myself at some point?

For instance, the Thrive Mascara was something I not only would’ve bought, but it was a brand I had heard of and was excited to try. I wound up hating the mascara. It clumps funny and if I wear it overnight, my eyes itch like crazy. That’s a big no on that product for me, but I didn’t go buy a full size one, so on the Ipsy front, I call it a win.

Breaking down the cost per item that I liked, my splurge cost me $2.86 per sample (including the two replacement samples I was sent for the one missing in my November Glam Bag – I liked them both). That brings to total of liked samples to 42.

Pros

It was also super easy to cancel – a few clicks on their website and clicking a confirmation link in an email, and I was good to go. Subscriptions renew on the first of the month, and you have until 12 PM the day before to cancel.

I found a few new products I actually do love:

• First Aid Beauty – Facial Radian Pads
• FoxyBAE Leave In Cream Conditioner
• Tarte Lip Gloss
• Disco Kitten Face Mask
• TonyMoly Peach Peach Sweet Foam Cleanser

I also found a perfume I really liked, which is kind of awesome because I usually won’t even try perfumes in stores since they sometimes give me hives. The name of it also made me laugh – I Am Trash.

And like I mentioned above, I know not to buy Thrive mascara now.

Cons

I would say, the one snag I had with the company all year was when one of the Glam Bags turned up with a product missing. It took a while to figure out how to contact Ipsy (and by a while, I mean like 30 minutes of Internet searching for the right email address).

Which, by the way, if you found this post trying to Google “who do I email when my Ipsy items are missing?” – It’s support@ipsy.com.

Ipsy responded right away, with no questions asked, that they would send a replacement. It might be that product, but if that product was already gone, it would be a similar one.

Of course, it was the product I was most excited about that was missing.

Ipsy also provides a tracking number for the replacement item.

Well, this happened during my UK tour this fall/winter and a few weeks went by and I realized I hadn’t received the tracking number and when I got home again, there was no replacement item.

I contacted Ipsy care again and they told me the item had been sent and provided a tracking number, but I told them it had never arrived – I didn’t have it.

A few hours later I had a new tracking number and a few days after that, I had a replacement package, which didn’t have the original missing item (logical as it was now like two months after that Glam Bag) but did actually have two replacement items, both of which I really liked.

One other thing was that there seemed to be a lot of repeat colors of things. I got a lot of a similar shade of purple and maroon nail polishes, even though they were different brands. I also received a lot of a similar shade of gray/smokey eyeshadow. The eyeshadow makes a little more sense, since I had my settings higher on smokey colored eyeshadows, but the nail polishes had no color preference set higher than others.

Finally, I’m not sure who needs 12 makeup bags, but I now have 12 makeup bags.

To help me deal with this clutter, if you want your own mini-Ipsy experience, I’ve repackaged three of the make-up bags with the products I was totally uninterested in (aka – I never opened them) and I’m raffling them off to you.

Enter below using the Rafflecopter and leave a comment on the blog about which bag you’d be interested in (Betty Boop, Green Bag, Animal Print).

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

So do I recommend Ipsy as a splurge? I think if you have the money to pay for a year up front without busting your budget, it can be a funny little thing each month. If you’re really particular about your makeup, it’s probably not for you. If you think it’s fun to explore some new stuff sometimes, it sure doesn’t hurt.

Note – this link isn’t a referral, since I cancelled, I don’t have a referral code anymore.

You might also wonder why I cancelled, if I liked the splurge so much. My plan was always to do it for just the year and see how it went. I’m going to reevaluate my budget next month and if it’s still looking ok for the same splurge, I’m going to pick another subscription box company (probably Birchbox or the Sephora one), so I can compare them at the end of next year.

Have you ever done a subscription box service? What did you think about it?