Alyssium Baby Beauty Box - a beauty box too good to be true!

This post is a bit of a fun post about a fake beauty box I made up.  I recently visited my friend, Alyssiumbaby, and she shared with me that she'd subscribed to Australian Beauty Box called BellaBox (BB) a little while ago but never really looked at the contents and put them aside to look at later. 

I'm really not a huge fan of BB because not long after I signed up, I found the value of their usual boxes to be extremely subpar.  I made the decision to subscribe a long time a go when I received TAMPONS in my beauty box.  They tried to say it was little "bonus" but honestly, I was just done, I'm sick of these crappy value subscription boxes that tend to be filled with a lot of skin care samples that most brands give away for free and a couple of full sized products that just don't sell (with maybe 1 decent item per month if you're lucky).

Anyway, I digress, AlyssiumBaby had this massive stash that she let me go through and I felt like a kid in a candy store!  She gave me a left over box so I decided to make my own beautybox with the choice items from a long running subscription (and any other minis or products that she'd picked up over the past year).


Ta-dah!  Wow, this is certainly a beauty box too good to ever exist in Australia!  here's all the items I picked out that AB let me take home. The full contents include:

• OGX Coconut Milk Shampoo and Conditioner Minis
• 1000Hour False Lashes
• Couleur Caramel Cream Liner and Dark Circle Concealer
• Nivea Unscented Lip Butter
• Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse Dry Oil mini
• Paula's Choice 2% BHA Liquid mini (SO EXCITED FOR THIS)
• LAQA&CO Lip Lube (giggity)
• Avene Eluage firming gel mini
• Anastasia Beverly Hills Clear Brow Gel

The Hair and Face products:

OGX Coconut Milk Shampoo and Conditioner Minis - I love the OGX coconut range but I haven't actually used the shampoo and conditioner, just the treatment products so I'm keen to try this!

Avene Eluage firming gel mini - I've been using this over the past week and honestly, I think I have to stop.  There's an ingredient in this that just doesn't agree with my skin and the skin around my eyes has been so tender since using it.  I thought Avene products were supposed to be quite gentle!

Paula's Choice 2% BHA Liquid - Since I live in Australia, Paula's Choice isn't super available (and by that I mean, we get gouged by shipping prices sadly) but there's a lot of PC products that really appeal to me since there's generally a no-bullshit approach to the products.   I've heard good things about this product so I'm keen to give it a whirl and see if it helps with keeping my pores nice and clean!

Nivea Lip Butter - A pretty decent lip balm, I've been using this since I got it and it's been helping get my lips back on track after this chilly winter.


Makeup Products:

Couleur Caramel Dark Circle Concealer - sadly I think this is a bit too dark for me to wear but I'm really impressed with just how creamy it was.  When I opened up the container, the cream was so perfectly matte looking but it was very smooth.

Couleur Caramel Cream Eyeliner - similar to the concealer above, this looked quite matte in its tub but quickly became usable and was very smooth.  Sadly this isn't as opaque as I'd like my eyeliner but it's a pretty decent product from a brand I've never actually seen before.  I've included a swatch of this below if anyone is interested.

LAQA & Co Lip Lube - So besides the funny name, this is a pretty good lip product.  I've also never really heard of LAQA & Co and this lip crayon looked like it would be pretty sheer and low quality if I'm being honest but when I applied it to my lips, it had a build-able colour.  It's still a semi-sheer payoff but it still turned out better than I expected since most purple/berry lip crayons I've found have been really sheer.  I've included a lip swatch below for anyone curious.   The only thing worth noting about this additionally is that it does seem to have a peppermint oil in the ingredients as it left quite a tingle on my lips when applying so this *may* irritate some users.

Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse Dry Oil mini - I was marvelling at this product with Galaxerie in Priceline recently, it's such a beautifully glitter all-purpose oil (intended for face, hair and body).  It leaves behind such a gorgeous shimmer, the only downside is that a full bottle was $29.99 which was a bit much for me at the time but I'm really keen to use this, mostly on my collarbone area and arms just to glitterbomb myself this summer!

1000Hour Naturalashes - I love false lashes, my lashes are so amazingly underwhelming so if I'm going somewhere nice, I'll chuck on some falsies.  I usually don't buy falsies locally and usually buy some from Asia (ususally Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Taiwanese brands) because I find the value here isn't quite as good but I'm interested in trying these and seeing if they're worth the price.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Clear Brow Gel - I was actually running low on brow gel so this came at a great time.  When I picked this up, I didn't realise it was an ABH product and was just keen to have a backup brow gel.  I'm loving this, it sets my brows but keeps them nice and soft, what more can you say?  ABH is pretty much the leading brand for brow products so you'd want to believe they've got a good brow gel product in their arsenal.

Here's the Lip Lube worn, this is about 2-3 coats but it's not a heavy texture so it's very easy to build it up to get a more solid colour happening.  Not bad hey!

Here's the Couleur Caramel Cream Eyeliner worn, it is probably not the best product for crisp opaque wings and really does a better job with a more subtle eyeliner or even tight-lining since it's quite gentle and not irritating.

Anyway, what did you think of this Magical Beauty Box?  It kinda bums me out that we don't have a very good subscription beauty box here and with Australia Post's pricing, it's not surprising that many of them are struggling to stay sustainable (not to mention how price gouged we get when it comes to cosmetics and skin care).   So far I've tried Bella Box, Marie Clare's The Parcel and Lust Have It and they've all been pretty disappointing, does anyone happen to know of some elusive magical beauty box that's actually decent and available to Australians?