This time of year is a little dangerous for me, when the curated boxes of goodies from different retailers start popping up, it tends to lead me into a trap, particularly when I’d like one item in the box, and it’s value compared to the cost of the box makes it easy to justify. A trap I’ve already fallen into twice this season. I’ll first start with this years Cult Beauty Beauty Bauble, a honeytrap which I’m pretty sure also caught me out last year too.
These little beauty baubles from Cult Beauty are fantastic, and I wish they did a few more each year to select from (although, I’m sure my purse is glad that there is only one to choose!). This year it was priced at £22.50, and featured four items inside. One of which was the giant draw to me this time. These make a fanastic little gift to yourself, a friend, a special secret santa or a stocking stuffer for a beauty lover or as a present under the tree.
You get a lot in here for your money and gives any beauty enthusiast plenty to be excited about and try out. Packaged in a small and neat compact box, the bauble features a ribbon around the top which could be hung on the tree if desired – I think to do this, it would be nice to include an outer sleeve to wrap and hide the contents on the tree.
Let’s jump into what was inside…
Nudestix Nudies All Over Face Blush Colour
I was excited to see this in the bauble as it is my favourite tone of blush and was excited to have a full size to really enjoy (more on that at the end!). Nudestix isn’t a brand I’ve tried tonnes from, but I’ve only recently started to get into cream blush and looking forward to putting this to the test. If the formula is nice this will be an instant hit for me!
Iconic Illuminator
I like having products like this to use every now and again, but I don’t use them super frequently, so this small sized one is perfect for me to actually be able to use up. I know this is one of people’s favourite products from Iconic and it’s one I’ve never tried so I’m looking forward to seeing if it lives up to the hype.
Too Faced Better Than Sex Mascara Mini
Ahh this is a blast from the past, and an old favourite of mine that I’ve not revisited in a long time. I looked up my review of Too Faced Better Than Sex, to remind myself what I loved about it. It’s amazing – I reviewed this back in 2015 and it’s still so loved with Too Faced not beating their original formula. I have had in my head that Too Faced is not a cruelty free brand, and have just found the joyous news that they are – so I may do a post around whether Too Faced is still as good seven years on!
Natasha Denona Mini Sunset Palette
The star of the show for me, and an easily enticing offer as this retails for £24.00, being more than the box itself. Natasha Denona is in my top 2 eyeshadow formulas and I find the palettes very collectable and some of the ones I tend to gravitate towards most. I like these mini five pan palettes for travel, particularly just weekend long trips, and my go to neutrals are warm toned bronzes, so this was a perfect addition to my collection – as I didn’t own any warm toned neutral palettes in the mini format. This is a glorious colour selection for the festive season, but I can also see it being a firm favourite on warm bronzed skins in summer too.
Problems with The Cult Beauty Beauty Bauble
Now, if we look at the screenshot above of the Cult Beauty Beauty Bauble, you may notice, like I did when this arrived that the Nudestix is not a full size 7g item, and therefore also does not meet the £75 value that they advertised the bauble at. For me, this is extremely disappointing, I was really looking forward to receiving that blush as it’s literally my favourite blush shade. This is also the second time that Cult Beauty have done this that I can remember with miscalculating the value of their boxes. They ended up sending an email with a voucher to use against a full shade of your choice.
I am not sure whether the Cult Beauty Beauty Bauble sold out quite quickly, or once they realised the issues with product size, they opted to pull it from sale but it’s no longer available.
Let me know in the comments as to whether these kinds of beauty deals manage to capture your interest (and your bank details!).
