Beauty Army April Kit Unboxing

I had been waitlisted for joining Beauty Army, and this month I finally was able to get in! Weeeeee! Beauty Army is one of those monthly beauty sampling services, but you get to choose your samples! I love that! Everything comes in a nifty reusable box as seen above. I am not sure what I’ll use mine for yet but I know I’ll find something. I’m such a packrat! Anyway, here’s what’s in my Beauty Army box this month…

The first item I got is a sample sized Redness Rescue from MAD Skincare. I’ve never tried this brand before, but it sounded nice. A full sized tube is 1 oz and $32. This guy is .13 oz. You’re supposed to just apply it to wherever your skin is red and irritated after cleansing. Seems easy enough. It’s a gel, so it shouldn’t be too heavy or rich to wear under makeup.

Next up is a sample size of Befine Night Cream. This night cream contains cocoa (yay antioxidants), rice bran, wheat amino acids, and all sorts of fun stuff. It claims to help skin retain moisture, improve circulation of your skin (the natural caffeine in cocoa helps with that), and diminish fine lines and wrinkles. That’s a lot of claims from one little night cream! This tube is .5 oz and retails for $10. A full size is 1.7 oz and retails for $30.

Next up is a little baby sample tube of CellCeuticals NeoCell Micro-Resurfacing Skin Treatment. What caught my eye about this product when I was choosing my samples is that it contains “volcanic micro-minerals”. If you’re a MAC fan you may already be tracking with me – I’m a huge fan of the MAC Volcanic Ash skin care that was (of course) limited edition. So when I read that I jumped at the chance to try it! It’s a very gentle micro exfoliator, similar (maybe) to the volcanic ash scrub? My sample is .33 oz. A full size is 2 oz and retails for $47. Ouch! But if it’s awesome, I think skin care is worth splurging on.

Babor is a line I’d heard of but never tried. As you know I’m super pale, and we’re heading into summer (California, we have summer in May basically…) so I thought I’d give this a shot. It says it’s suitable for face and body, and has a balanced formula that provides UVA and UVB protection. It also says it’s good for sensitive skin, so that’s a big plus. :) It’s not oil free, but since I have dry skin I’m not too concerned. In fact, my main worry with sunscreen is that it’ll be too mattifying. This also doesn’t contain any avobenzene which is awesome since I’m allergic to it! A full size is 200 ml and retails for $32. My sample size is 30 ml.

And then we have Pssssst! the much beloved dry shampoo with the silly name. The can included in this kit is 1.76 oz (the travel friendly size) and retails at Walgreens for $5.99. You can find it cheaper online though (I found it for $2.99 on Amazon). I’m looking forward to trying this, but I don’t have the highest hopes since I haven’t really been a huge dry shampoo fan in the past. Maybe I’m just not using it right but they never seem to give me that voluminous look that others say they get from them. Never to let that stop me from trying another one, I will definitely be giving this a go really soon! And besides, is there anything more hilariously fun than purposefully not washing your hair for the sake of testing a beauty product? NO.

The last sample I am showing is actually the first one I picked. I jumped on this bad boy. Joico K-Pak Reconstructor is said to be the creme de la creme of reconstructing conditioners, and since I’m in dire need of a cut and have pretty gnarly looking ends right now, I am REALLY excited to try it. It wasn’t until after I picked the sample that I realized this thing is huge! This product retails in 2 sizes and this is the smaller of the 2, but it’s not a sample it’s just a small size if that makes sense. It’s 5.1 oz! This product retails for something like $24 – I googled and got a lot of different answers but I’d say they average about that. Ulta carries Joico instore but not online.

Overall if you couldn’t tell, I’m very pleased with my Beauty Army kit this month. The subscription costs just $12 a month, which is well worth it considering the one Joico product is worth twice that or more, plus there’s the other items. At first I was disappointed that there was no makeup offered, but once I sifted through all the choices I was pleased. These are still really great things that I do intend to try/use/review. I hope they offer more makeup in the future. This month they did have one fragrance sample that I recall, but it’s a fragrance I already have (Aquolina Pink Sugar). I also like that if ever I don’t see any samples I want, I can just skip a month.

Oh! And another important thing to note about Beauty Army. Like many sampling services they have you take a style quiz before you pick your samples. The quiz DOES actually have some bearing on the samples you’re offered. You can retake the quiz as many times as you want, so I took it a few times just to see what samples would pop up if I put in different answers. I liked that it wasn’t offering things that are totally wrong for me like oil absorbing products etc.

So you want to join the army? I actually have no idea if they are open for membership at the moment, but if not you can get on a wait list. They take people in the order they get on the list once they open up again, so it’s worth getting on the list if it’s not open. If you’re interested, I’d be thrilled if you’d use my referral link, but I won’t be hurt (I’ll never know!) if you don’t. :)