Birchbox

I was teaching my makeup workshop at Middle Eastern Mayhem in July and one of the participants told me about Birchbox. I'm really glad (so far) that she did! ;) I had never heard of it!

So what is it?
It's a monthly beauty sample subscription. It ultimately comes in a brown box so makes sense that it's called "birch".  The cost is 10$ per month and you'll get 5-6 samples. We're talking decent size samples in cute bottles/packaging... not the tiny envelope kind.

Now, you won't be able to customize the samples that you're getting; it's more or less random. But you do have a profile that you fill out and it will help them (allegedly) to pick out the samples.  I'm one who likes surprises so that's actually fun for me to not know what I'm getting.

I've received two boxes thus far.  I was a bit disappointed at first with my first box as I was hoping for makeup stuff and got some beauty products instead but it turns out that there were 2 products that I really love (one that I even purchased as a full size and will talk about in a blog entry soon) so it turned out real good. I was also a bit disappointed in the 2nd box but I may end up liking it. I haven't had much time to look into it yet.

Your samples come with a little card that tells you how to use the product. I found that, while helpful to get a quick idea of what the product is about, these little cards didn't give nearly enough info about the product so I actually had to go on the website to find more info for each of those products.

Still, at 10$ a month, it's a nice little surprise to get in the mail.

When you first sign up for the box, you'll be put on a waiting list; don't be surprised by that. After 2-4 weeks, they'll send you info to "reserve your box subscription." I think that it's really that they plan boxes for whatever number of subscriptions that they have and a few extra so then you'll get the extra ones after subscriptions are done. Anyway. Don't sweat it, you'll get a box rather quickly.

You can cancel at any time after the first box.

https://www.birchbox.com/