March IPSY Glam bag

It's April. Meaning I totally failed at getting March's glam bag up actually DURING March. Shuttup. I'll get it next month.

Time slips away from me. Honestly. But I quite liked March's bag so I want to talk about it!

I am going to put this post under a read more cut because there are a lot of pictures! However if you're familiar with my blog you probably already are used to that ;)

This month's bag theme was Destination Beauty. There was a tag attached talking about the 'local' artist that did this design and what it is based off of, etc. Interesting enough of an idea, but I wasn't particularly fond of this month's bag. My close friend ended up liking it so I am giving it to her. I obviously have enough bags from IPSY to share! Lol

The first item I got is the NYX Love in Rio eyeshadow trio. I really like that that rhymes. So anyway I took a lot of pictures of this particular item.
I think the rather confusing thing is that all the trios are called Love in Rio, and in addition they each have a shade name. The shade I got was Segredos De Giselle.
If you get IPSY you got one of these but you could have gotten any number of shades. However as I was looking through them the shades don't differ that much in my opinion. They all looked very similar.

One detail I found to be really cute was the bow at the front. Unfortunately I found this made it a little difficult to open but I still really love the design.

My trio consists of a very pale shimmery pink, a pale beige, and a bronzed gold.  These are all neutral colors which aren't the first thing I reach for. But being NYX they are pretty good quality so I do want to use them.

I think that the far left color is a bit more pink in person, it's just hard to tell in pictures.

swatched without primer

As you can see the shades are very shimmery, even bordering on frost. Frosty neutrals are not my cup of tea for the most part so I feel like I will hardly use this product. 

This is of course a full size product. You can purchase this shade or another shade from the Love In Rio trios (tehe) here on NYX's website. They retail for only $6 which is why I love NYX.

I don't think I would repurchase this specific product because none of the trio colors really catch my eyes. However I love NYX eyeshadows so I definitely will purchase plenty of other shadows from them in the future. 

Pixi is one of those brands I always want to like but overall I have not been impressed by them. This product is no different. It is the Flawless Beauty Primer. The packaging is a good indication of what lies inside.

This 'primer' is very shimmery so I don't know how it can really work as a primer. To be fair, I have not tried it as a primer yet! So maybe it will work really well and surprise the hell out of me.
But I'm not holding my breath.

I *think* this is the mini version that is available on their website for $9.
If that's the case, I would never buy something this small for $9 unless it was a miracle product. For something that you're putting all over your face, it seems it would go quickly. Note that I haven't used this product on my face yet so I'm not sure how it will perform there. Rest assured that if I try it and love it, I will definitely post about it.

I don't think I could accurately put into words how excited I was when I first opened my bag and found this Chella eyeliner pen. I have been lusting after a navy eyeliner for a while now and this Indigo blue color seemed right up that alley. I have also been super into eyeliner pens because they are the easiest for me to use.
So the excitement I felt when I found this- it was like I won the lottery. I proclaimed I would never regret subscribing to IPSY again, because it led me to this product.

The perfect eyeliner pen tip

I have to say that even in this picture it's not as blue as it is in real life. It's definitelyy blue, make no mistakes about it.  This also is impervious to smudging and is also waterproof. I thought I'd found the holy grail.

In a way I'm glad I didn't post this right away because I got a chance to actually use this product in a makeup look (stay tuned for a post on that look) And because of that I have to report that I was super disappointed :(
This is the kind of pen that you have to use facing down which is hard to do when you're drawing on your eye. Applying it to my left eye was simple and straight forward but trying to make a matching line on my right eye was a nightmare! I had to re-do it legit 30 times. I spent wayyyy too long. I also found that it was hard to layer on top of eyeshadow so you had to go over the line a few times.

For the price I am really surprised and let down that the quality just wasn't there. This eyeliner pen retails for $24 on the Chella website and that is far too much for me to logically spend on eyeliner.
I would not repurchase due to the cost and the underwhelming performance of the product.

The last product included in everyone's bag was this BareMinerals Marvelous Moxie lipstick in get ready.

I have never tried anything from BareMinerals so I was definitely intrigued to try.

I really am into little lipsticks because I can't get over how cute they are.

The swatch looks much darker online than it does in person. In person this is a totally nondescript pink lipstick that is neither too bold or too bright. It's perfectly pigmented and has a smooth application.

I took pictures in two different lightings because it really did look different depending on the light. I quite like this color because I'm not much of a pink fan unless it's subtle. This is ALMOST like a "my-lips-but-better" shade but not quite.

With a shift of the light source you can see it comes across as a bit darker but still not bold.

My brain was feeling really lazy and I couldn't find the packaging with the weight on it so I turned to one of my favorite blogs, Brightest Bulb in the Box ... who worked out the math to be that this sample is worth approximately $7.50 . You can buy the full size version here for $18.

So if you're keeping score, there was only 4 items in our bags this month. This is unusual as there is usually 5. However since 2 of these were full size products and the other 2 were deluxe samples, I'm not complaining. It was obviously definitely worth the money and I enjoyed the 4 products I did get.

The over all retail value of this bag comes to: $46.50
As always, the price I paid for this subscription box is $10 a month which includes shipping and the cute little bag that is included. As always, I maintain that this service is a steal!

If you would like to sign up for IPSY yourself, you can do so using my referral link here! Thanks!

If you're already an IPSY glam bag subscriber, did you get the same items as me? Were you happy or disappointed? Let me know!