Ipsy Glam Bag Subscription Review

Having been an Ipsy member and Glam Bag subscriber for a few months now I feel like I can accurately review the service on a whole for you all now.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ipsy’s Glam Bag subscription service, first of all…hi, you must be new to the beauty world. Welcome. Anyway, it’s a monthly subscription where for $10/month you receive a makeup bag (purse size, roughly) with several beauty products in it. Some of the products are samples, some of them are full size. Each participating brand also provides some sort of deal for Ipsy subscribers. There is a lot of opportunity for brands to sponsor giveaways for additional prizes, so many times a participating brand will collaborate with the Ipsy stylists for some kind of challenge or contest, too.

I got my first Glam Bag in April, and I just received my August bag. I also got the bag from March (and I think one or 2 of the products in it) at the Generation Beauty event in June.

The Bags
The bags themselves are cute. Some of them are better than others. Each month’s bag has a theme, and the bag usually goes along with the theme somehow. They’re not super high quality bags by any means – basically the same quality as you’d receive with a Gift With Purchase. I don’t know who the manufacturer of the bags is, but I know they pay them less than $1 per bag (industry insider info there, y’all). They’re fine to just toss in a purse and use for a while, but I do not expect them to hold up over time. My favorite pattern is the one on the May Ipsy bag. Check out Pink Sith’s review for some great pics.

The Products
Duh this is what you all want to know about the most. The selection is vastly improved over the Glam Bags of old (when they used to be MyGlam). Here are some of the products I received in various bags:

• Benefit Ben-a-Tint sample vial (the standard tiny sample)
• NYX cream blush (full size)
• Zoya nail polish (full size)
• Starlooks lip liner (full size)
• Michael Todd exfoliating scrub (deluxe sample size)
• Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick (sample size – and can I just talk about how cute a MINI lipstick is?)
• Pacifica BB Cream (sample)
• Selena Gomez collection Nicole By OPI nail polish (full size)
• Nailtini nail polish (full size)
• Juice Beauty lip gloss (full size)
• Sexy Hair Powder Play volumizing powder (sample)
• Sexy Hair Soy Renewal Beach Spray thingy (sample)
• BH Cosmetics Eye Shadow (little mini sample trio – shadows are about the size of a nickel each)
• J.Cat Beauty glitter cream palette (full size but totally useless stupid product)
• J.Cat Beauty false lashes (full size obviously – can’t really sample an eyelash lol)
• Urban Decay eye shadow (full size – this was a special perk for those who are active on the forums, not everyone got this)
• Be A Bombshell blush (full size)
• St. Tropez instant bronzing stuff (deluxe sample)
• Mica Beauty shimmer powder (I got 2 of these in different bags – I think they’re full size)
• Pixi Lash Booster mascara (sample)
• Yaby cosmetics concealer pan (full size but Yaby products are teensy)

Some pretty awesome things there. Definitely a lot more actual color cosmetics than other subscriptions I’ve seen/tried. I was STOKED about the full size Zoya polish and UD shadow. To be honest, the items were more hit than miss for me. Yes there were some misses. St Tropez was a huge bomb for me – I never tan. The Yaby concealer was way too dark (they sent me the 2nd to lightest shade even though my style profile says Very Fair skin – ooookay). It turns out even if they’d gotten it right and sent me the lightest shade, it would have still been too dark…but oh well.

The worst product of all was the J.Cat Beauty glitter cream palette. I tossed it in the garbage where it belongs because I was MAD at it, so I can’t really do a review with pictures. But the product wasn’t eye safe. Yet it came packaged with eye shadow applicators. Wtf? The glitter cream itself was lousy because even if you wanted to use it somewhere besides your eyes (like where???), it never sets. It just says moist and creases up somethin’ fierce.

But remember, there was more good than bad. I was mostly pretty satisfied with Ipsy’s selections!

The Service
I never had any issues with my bags at all, so I never had to contact IpsyCare. They always sent me a shipping notification and I received my bags when it said I was going to. Never had any issues with products arriving damaged or anything of that nature. I know there have been shipping issues with other people’s bags, but my personal experience has been nothing but smooth sailing.

Value
You definitely get a good deal with Ipsy. The $10 gets you a cute bag and some usually mostly full size products. The bag with the Zoya polish for example, that polish is $8 alone. The rest of the items in that bag were definitely worth more than $2.

Overall
If you’re considering subscribing to Ipsy, or you’re currently on the wait list (when bags sell out everyone else gets wait listed), go for it. It’s worth subscribing to.

But I Still Canceled
I just canceled my subscription. It wasn’t due to any negative feelings or experiences with the service. Money is tight right now, and Ipsy doesn’t let you skip a month like my favorite subscription service Julep does, so saving the $10 a month is nice.

But more than that, I’m just kind of over it. I’m up to my eyeballs in makeup bags (hello I used to work for a company that makes them lol), and many of the brands that work with Ipsy are also brands I work with as a blogger, so I didn’t really feel I was being exposed to anything new. I’ve tried Pixi, I’ve tried NYX, I’ve tried UD, etc. That doesn’t make me love the products any less. I just felt like it wasn’t really necessary to have this subscription bag in my life anymore.

I’m looking in to taking the $10 I’m saving and putting it towards something else, which I will tell you about once all of the details are finalized.

 

Are any of you Ipsy subscribers? What was your experience like? Do you give Ipsy a thumbs up or thumbs down?