Julep Maven Review: December 2013

 Julep Maven sends out nail polish boxes each month, usually with a beauty product from their own brand included. Julep is now making everything from hand lotion to BB cream to hairspray and beyond. This month saw the introduction of Julep's new eyeshadows and primer.  They also released a lot of really gorgeous glittery and festive looking polishes, so the polishes saved the month. Yes, that means the eyeshadow was a mess. Here's my December 2013 Julep Maven review (Julep promo code for a free box at the end of this piece!)

Jillian, Celia, Shoshanna. Especially impressed with Celia, it is truly stunning and one of my favorite Julep polishes EVER.

Mia, Cara, Evelyn. Evelyn is probably one of only two polishes of the whole box that I didn't truly love. In another month I probably would have but since these polishes were so full of glitter and glam, Evelyn came off a bit boring I suppose.

Joelle, Andrea, Misti. Absolutely adore the glittery goodness of Joelle and Andrea, kinda neutral on Misti. I'll use it eventually but right now having fun with holos and glitters.

Looks pretty, doesn't it? Well, looks can be deceiving. This is seriously. Not. Good. Eyeshadow.  It's a fluffy, sparkly, poorly pigmented, mess. Blah. Big letdown.

As primers go this is marginal at best for me. The holy grail of all primers couldn't have saved the shadow, anyway.

After considerable effort and resorting to Benefit primer (Julep primer sooo did not get it to show up well), this is what I got. By the way I had to do multiple swipes of each and really bear down. Like I said, I consider the shadow ... blah.

On the happy side: Love! This is a great extra, and you can never have too many Twistbands in my opinion!

 So, despite my rant about the eyeshadow palette, I liked Julep this month overall. Thank goodness the polishes were as great as expected! My fondest wish for Julep in the new year is that they go back to focusing on what they excel at: Polish. Occasional forays into products are fun and give us something to anticipate. A new beauty product every single month is getting to be an eye rolling "Oh geez what next" kind of thing for me at this point.

 I still love Julep because I mainly enjoy their polishes, and I'd recommend at least trying them out with the free first box if you haven't. You can sign up here: Use the code FREEBOX here to get your first box free:JULEP MAVEN FREE BOX