Picnic of Pretty

Beauteque Monthly July BB Bag Review

After a reading a lot of reviews and watching many unboxing videos I’ve decided to jump into the Kbeauty subscription box community and the most exciting box to me, of the multitude out there, was the Beauteque BB Bag.

What is the Beauteque BB Bag?  The BB Bag is Beauteque’s themed monthly subscription service that features mainly Korean beauty and lifestyle products.  They promise to deliver a minimum of six full size products with a value of $65-85 every month to your doorstep.

The value of the bag is based on USA pricing and will be higher than the Korean pricing  and may be higher than the pricing on Amazon or other retailers.  The main attraction of the BB Bag, though, is the curation which is usually on point.  The staff at Beauteque are very good at choosing items that stick to the month’s theme and cover a wide variety of products.  A caveat, the items tend to lean more towards skin care as opposed to make up so if you prefer the latter you may not enjoy this bag so much.  Another thing to consider is that BB Bags seem to always include sheet masks as one of the full size products.

Monthly cost breakdown:

Month to month:       $24

Three month:            $24

Six month:                 $23

Twelve month:          $22

The BB Bag ships to most countries for a flat shipping fee:

USA:               $3.95

Canada:          $6.95

Europe:          $8.95

Australia:       $9.95

New Zealand:            $9.95

Japan:             $9.95

Hong Kong : $9.95

Singapore :    $9.95

For more information on the BB Bag and how it works visit: http://www.beautequemonthly.com/bbbag

Onto the July Bag:

This month the theme of the bag was Picnic of Pretty and featured items that you would use “to look and feel your prettiest for a perfect day at the park”.  The products in the bag definitely followed the theme, though I think most of them would be best used after the picnic.

The bag was a nice and cheery yellow rubbery material.  It can be immersed in water and would be perfect for taking to the beach.  Not onto the contents:

Secret Key Aloe Soothing Moist Toner

There really isn’t much to say about a toner, it’s a toner, we all have them (and if you for some reason don’t then go out and get one right now).  This one is great for summer because of the aloe extract.  Aloe extract is fantastic for soothing burns on the skin (goodbye sunburn) and also for moisturizing dry skin.  It’s a great product all around and can also be used in medicine, especially for sore throats.  I’ve added it to my routine because I spend time out in the sun almost every day and I don’t want to ruin my skin.  I’ve been using it in conjunction with my Herb Day Aloe cleanser by The Face Shop. 

As a note, the other option for this toner was Witchhazel which is better for oily skin.

Yeon/Jeju Hallabong Special Peeling and Pack Mini 4 Set

This is a cute set containing four wash-off masks: one Energy Peeling Gel; one Ghassoul Pack; two Energy Live Packs.  These little masks are the perfect size to take with me when I’m travelling so I’ll be saving them for my next trip which is coming up in October.  I’ll try to do a small review on them at that point.

Etude House Milk Talk Body Wash

I was very excited to see an Etude House item in the bb bag since I’ve heard so much about it online.  I got a body wash which I don’t exactly need at the moment but I’ll see how I feel about putting it in the rotation.  It’s a decent sized product, coming in at 200ml, and we’ll see how long it lasts when I start using it.  I got the milk scent which smells like baby powder.  I like it but it may not be for everyone.

Holika Holika Golden Monkey Glamour Lip

This is a three step mask for the lips.  It consists of a scrub, a gel mask, and a honey treatment and is meant to clear up chapped lips.  This looks to be best saved for winter when lips get dry.

Tony Moly Crystal Blusher

I really like this.  It’s just a simple blush but the colour is perfect for my skin.  It goes on very smooth, doesn’t look fake, and has just a bit of shimmer to light up the complexion. 

Blending Brush

Beauteque often includes a lifestyle product in their bags the majority of which are beauty accessories such as eyelash curlers or make-up brushes.  This one is from their own line and is meant for blending the make-up to give it a flawless finish on your face.  I rarely layer my make-up enough to need that so I’ve re-purposed it as a mask brush.  I blatantly took this (frankly genius) idea from Harlot Beauty.  The brush is firm enough to comfortably put on my clay mask and is very simple to clean.  I’ve been doing this for two months now and it’s so much easier and less messy than doing it with my fingers.  I also get a much more even distribution of the mask on my face so I highly recommend using this brush for that. 

I love this bag.  For the first one that I receive it’s exciting, full of large items and things that I would never have known about or thought of trying.  This is why I decided to jump into the subscription pool, the ability to try things I would not have the chance to otherwise.  I’ll be keeping the subscription going for as long as my funds can stand it.

Beauteque Head to Toe Aloe Bag

I got this bag over a month ago, time does fly. Luckily this means that I've gotten to try most of the products in it so I can tell you my thoughts on then. The Bag itself came in a simple linen drawstring pouch which went well with the aloe theme and will be used as a shoe bag in my travels. It's perfect to fit a pair of flats or pumps.  There were seven products in this bag and they were all skin care products. They were also quite large which is nice as they should last me the rest of summer.

My favourite item goes first. It's the Welcos Aloe Vera Soothing Gell.

I am loving the heck out of this gel. It's a pretty big (125ml) container. Slightly tinted green (cause aloe, duh) and perfectly size for my tiny hands. The consistency is a bit thicker than water but the spray still comes out very fine. It takes just a few moments to dry on the skin and doesn't leave any sticky residue. The smell reminds me of cucumbers but all aloe products smell that way. The smell isn't overpowering in the least and dissipates within a few seconds. I'm really happy that it was in the bag as I was looking for a face mist and aloe is just perfect this summer.

Item number two that I've been loving is the Natue Republic Smoothing Aloe Moisture Emultion.

The emultion is quite big as well coming in at 160ml. It comes in a very hard green plastic bottle with a somewhat strange fitting in the neck. The Emultion is actually really hard to get out of the bottle but I've gone around that by placing a pump into the neck. For now it sits in the funny little fitting but when I've used the contents more ill take the fitting out and screw the pump into the neck. It seems that there are standard pump sizes used around the world since the pump fits my British body cream, my Russian shampoo and now my Korean emultion.  The consistency is similar to a runny cream but it's thick enough that it doesn't run through your fingers as you apply it. There isn't much smell to it, which I love, and it absorbes into the face pretty quickly. The description says that it works best when used in tandem with an aloe toner and I have one of those from my BB Bag. I'm glad to have more aloe products for the summer since I spend quite a bit of my time outside either biking or shooting and I always need soothing creams.

Thankfully, for creams I have the Nature Republic Aloe Vera Body Cream.

This is a pretty nice body cream which is 90% aloe extract.  It comes out with a slight greenish tinge and a hint of aloe smell.  The cream glides on very well and absorbs quickly without leaving any kind of residue  This isn't the most interesting of products but it works very well in the summer especially when combined with other aloe products.

Next I have the product I haven't opened yet. The It's Skin Aloe Soothing Gel.

I haven't used this yet because I already have my The Face Shop aloe gel and I'm not going to open a new gel just to try it. This is the smallest product in the bunch (coming in at 75ml) but I don't mind as I can take it on board a plane so it's totally coming with me to San Francisco in October.  With all the sun there this thing will get quite a bit of use.

As always Beauteque has included two sheet masks with their bag and these are both aloe sheet masks. 

I have yet to open the 3W Fresh Aloe Mask Sheet but I've already used the Tosowoong Pure Mask Aloe and been very happy with it. It's got oodles of serum goodness and after it took it off I had just a bit of product left to rub into my neck, chest and upper back (just around my neck. I burn easily so aloe there is needed as well).  I have high hopes for the 3W mask. (Update: I've used the 3W mask and it worked great at soothing my face.  The serum absorbed into my skin really well and didn't leave much on the sheet after I took it off  There was just enough serum to pat a bit onto my neck)

The last product in this bag was a Silicon Massage Pad by a Chinese company called Anna. 

It's very soft but I've used it and I honestly don't see a difference in how clean my skin gets. I've been blessed with pretty small pores so just using cleansers is fine for me.

The Aloe Bag was definitely worth it for me. With fair skin and a love for outdoor sports aloe is my savior in the summer. I even have an aloe cleanser from The Face Shop and an aloe toner from Secret Key to complete the set! As of right now it's still on sale on the Beauteque website so go grab one while you can.  (Beauteque are also doing a promotion where if you subscribe to a 3, 6, or 12 month BB Bag you get the Aloe Bag for free.)