Okiedokes, so Glossybox is a monthly subscription service which cost £10 plus £2.95 P&P. For that you recieve five “high end” samples per month in a beautifully packaged… well, glossybox. I’ve reviewed and shown pictures of the glossybox in its complete state before and you can have a look at that HERE. You can subscribe to the glossybox service HERE.

August’s box arrived a few days ago, and here are my thoughts…

This months box is the “International Superstars” box, and contains “hero products” from around the world to try – here are the contents I received;

The first thing I picked out is the DHC deep cleansing oil;

This is a decent sample size at 30ml – I’d expect to get about a weeks worth of cleansing from this, and I do love oil cleansers. The only drawback for me personally is that I think that this brand is probably tested on animals (I’m unable to find any information on their site about their testing policy), which would prevent me from purchasing no matter how good this is. In terms of value for money, the full size retails at £18.50 for 200mls. I’ve heard a lot of great things about this and its been reviewed on the lovely LIPGLOSSIPING site favourably.

Next, and I have to say probably the low point of the box for me, was the Vera Valenti eye shadow palette…

This is a Spanish brand, and the palette shown retails at £3.95.

I’m really sorry to say but this palette has a very cheap look and feel about it – something akin to those palettes you get in christmas gift sets. On swatching the shadows are pleasantly not too chalky or powdery, so I wouldn’t expect a lot of fall down, however they are pretty poorly pigmented. I can’t say I was blown away by this, and I don’t feel that this is really “high end” as I’d hope from a glossybox…

I also received a pro white nail polish from the brand Alessandro, which hails from Germany…

This is one of those purple tinted clear polishes which optically reduces yellowing or staining on nails – I’ve never personally tried these sort of polishes but I do have vague recollections of having acrylic nails when I was a teenager in a salon which used Alessandro products – for the record those nails were pretty good as I remember… so I have high hopes for this polish. And to be honest, even if it doesn’t blow me away, I can always use another base coat. This retails at £7.85 and is a full size sample…

Perfume samples seem to be very divisive when it comes to these boxes – personally I don’t mind them – perfumes can be very expensive, and samples in vials are actually pretty hard to come by in department stores – most now favour the cards that you spray on. This brings us to our next sample – Valentina Absolu eau de parfum…

This is a pretty sophisticated fragrance – very floral with musky notes. Personally this is not a fragrange I’d buy for myself, as I find it a little heavy, but that’s the beauty of samples – the full size retails at £61 for 50mls.

I also recieved a full size Lipcote and a Glossybox branded lipstick;

Lipcote I’m always happy to see – its a bit of a classic “oldie but goodie” product that I feel works pretty well, and does what it says – this is a full size product which is again always nice to receive, but I’m again not sure that this is what I’d consider a “high end product” – it retails at £3.99 for 7mls.

The lipstick is a glossybox own brand – I’m not sure how I feel about these being in the boxes – on one hand if this is a sign that they are planning to launch a range then I’m interested to see the products, however if they are just a bit of a filler then I’m not sure that’s fair on the customer. This is a very wearable everyday shade -

As I said I’ve got pretty mixed feelings about this being in the box – I’m thinking I’d prefer to try an actual high end sample instead – and glossybox do have some great high end samples in their boxes sometimes that seeing things like this does let them down a little for me. This retails at £9.50.

In summary – this is a decent box in terms of “value for money” with the contents being worth more than the cost of the actual box, however I do feel that this months box would have benefited from more high end samples being included… Next months box is a limited edition and glossybox are hailing it as their most unique yet – I’m feeling very hopeful about that one!

Did you get this months glossybox? What were your thoughts?

Disclaimer – this was a  PR sample, however all thoughts are honest.