I decided to try out Lip Monthly since they had a special running to get four months for just under $40 which meant the first bag was free. I didn’t realize that the first bag would be a duplicate of an old bag – May’s bag, seen here on My Subscription Addiction. I like everything in the bag, and it’s a really great bag, but I felt like it was a little dishonest to say that my first bag would be free, and instead of sending July’s bag, send out May’s instead as the ‘free’ bag. I can’t say this inspires any kind of faith for the remaining three months of the subscription. But anyway, on to the contents..
- Jor’el Parker Fango Mud Therapy – 1 oz / $3 – (Product is sample size) I didn’t even realize that this is a Harvey Prince product until I went to look it up. I do like mud masks, but like all of Harvey Prince’s products, this is HEAVILY scented. Also troubling is that there’s no ingredient list on the product nor is there an ingredient list on the website. I did end up finding one elsewhere and while it’s pretty basic, it’s nothing terribly special either. I’ll still give it a whirl one of these days, but the scent is honestly overpowering. Also! The product card lists the value of this as $10, but I found it on the Harvey Prince website for $3 as the sample size.
- Dirty Little Secret Lipstick – 3.8 g / $10 – (Product is full size) On the website, this looks like a perfect scarlet red, but even in the tube it looks more berry colored, almost a little violet. Fortunately, it goes on more towards the berry-red spectrum for me and looks surprisingly great on! It’s not too bright either and is probably my absolute new favorite color which I wasn’t expecting when I opened the tube. Honestly pleasantly surprised by this! The formula is somewhat matte, but doesn’t seem to have a lot of staying power. Still, I like the color that much that this is a big win for me.
- So Susan Jello Shot – 4.5 mL / $24.95 – (Product is full size) It’s BRIGHT orange in the tube, but the second I put it on my lips, it turned this sweet shade of pink and stuck around forever. I can’t see using this on my cheeks but it makes for a fantastic lip stain, and yet again, was something that I was a little skeptical about, but ended up being probably the best lip stain I’ve ever tried. It seems like the pink color can vary based on you skin chemistry and temperature, but my pink was a pretty steady Hello Kitty pink-pink.
- Manna Kadar Lip Locked Priming Gloss Stain – 5 mL / $24 – (Product is full size) At first glance, the color, Lucky, looks a little bit like a dusty rose tone which never works out on my skin, however, once I put it on, it was basically the perfect neutral for my lips. Most neutrals completely wash me out and make me look like a corpse, but this has enough red/pink in it that it almost nearly perfectly matches my natural lip color. So, score again for a product I never ever would’ve thought to pick up that ended up being a total winner. The formula isn’t a gloss or stain like the name implies – it’s definitely more like a liquid lipstick than anything else, but the website says it contains a stain, primer, and pigment all in one.
The total value comes to $61.95 which is pretty fantastic when you consider this bag cost me just under $10. I’m honestly a little torn.. while I’m a little bothered by the lack of transparency on the website about the ‘free’ bag being a previous month’s bag, I’m honestly super happy with the three lip products and will give the mud mask a go because I do love a good mud mask. On their Facebook page, they mentioned that they chose the May bag as the free bag because it had great customer feedback, and I see why, but I am a little disappointed that I’m not getting the actual July bag though I’ve not yet seen anyone post that one online. I feel like I need to repeat myself because I DO like the bag, but the misleading advertising is troubling. I’ve still got three months left, so we’ll see how things go.