Beauteque Mask Maven is a monthly k-beauty subscription box dedicated to masks. If you love trying new Korean sheet masks, this subscription is for you!
My Subscription Addiction pays for this subscription. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
The Subscription Box: Beauteque Mask Maven
The Cost: $18.95 month-to-month ($15 subscription + $3.95 shipping), save with 6- and 12-month subscriptions
ACTIVE DEAL: Save 10% off of your subscription
CODE: SHEETFACED
The Products: 9 to 11 masks of all kinds, straight from Korea. Most are facial sheet masks, but you will sometimes see a hair mask or hand mask or lip mask, too.
Ships to: USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia (see international shipping costs during checkout)
Check out all of our Beauteque Mask Maven reviews and the Beauty Subscription Box Directory for more great beauty-oriented subscriptions!
Keep Track of Your Subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription list or wishlist!
The information card has changed since the last time I reviewed this subscription. You don’t get any English instructions now (unless the mask packet itself happens to have them) but there’s not much involved in using most sheet masks!
Innisfree It’s Real Squeeze Mask Tea Tree – Value $1.99
This mask had a ton of serum. So much that it kind of didn’t play nicely with my makeup (excess serum that was on the skin made the makeup not want to stick if that makes sense). There was another mask from this product line in the box and I made sure to use that one at night, instead. Anyway, this has tea tree extract, which is really good at healing breakouts (I recently got one from the Julep mattifying primer which is not actually mattifying, either…). It also has green tea, tangerine, and other extracts that contain a lot of antioxidants (something I love in skincare to help prevent sun damage).
Innisfree It’s Real Squeeze Mask Lime – Value $1.99
Performance of this mask was similar to the tea tree mask so I’m glad I used it at night. This has lots of similar ingredients as the tea tree mask but also lime extract, which is full of vitamin C, of course. Vitamin C is an antioxidant that can help fight free radical damage (which might, in turn, lead to discoloration or the formation of fine lines and wrinkles). Naturally , ou should also use a good sunscreen, but a few antioxidant skincare products do help.
Lookatme Cucumber Essence Face Mask – Value $2
This mask includes a cucumber extract which I found to be soothing. It also has hydrolyzed collagen and sodium hyaluronate, which can both help hold on to moisture at the surface of the skin and allantoin, which is soothing to rough skin. It has a whole lot of different plant callus culture extracts. Plant calluses are de-differentiated plant cells (kind of like stem cells in animals, if it helps to think of them that way) that can be grown in a lab and can be an easier way to produce key extracts that would normally be produced by a plant in the field. The extracts can then easily be collected from the culture medium without the need for planting and harvesting outdoors.
Healing Bird Botanical Face Mask Ultra Moisture Coconut – Value $2.99
I think this brand is new to me. This has just a ton of moisturizing ingredients, including a few I don’t normally see. One is agave extract, which I would imagine contains polymers that hold onto water (have you ever seen how thick agave nectar can be). This also has coconut oil and shea butter. Please note that this one is fairly full of silicones. Sometimes silicones work with my skin and sometimes they don’t, but they seem to be at low enough levels here so as to not cause any problems.
GD11 Raising Power Mask – Value $4.90
This mask was an exercise in frustration. It comes in two compartments and you are supposed to rub your thumbs or something to release the serum into the mask compartment. Well, I did this until my hands were very sore (and I also pulled and pushed and tugged) and couldn’t get the serum into the mask compartment. I used a different mask that morning, in the end, and then had the idea to use scissors on this package, which was quicker and more satisfying, though I had to be careful not to spill. This one has some standard ingredients like trehalose and sodium hyaluronate (moisturizing), niacinamide (can help reduce redness and discoloration), and allantoin (which can help soothe rough skin). And then the weirdness begins. This has “human cord blood cell conditioned media.” Now, I have heard of using cord blood for the treatment of various medical issues, but it is super weird to see it in a sheet mask and I am honestly not sure what this ingredient does here. (If it contains actual stem cells, they won’t do much if applied to your skin. If it is just the media cells have been grown in, which is what it sounds like, I really can’t even begin to guess what effect that would be expected to have.)
Leaders Insolution Juicy Pina Colada Bright Mask – Value $3.99
This one was a hydrogel type mask and it smelled very good. This contains some soothing ingredients like chamomile extract, some whitening ingredients like niacinamide, as well as pineapple extract. Pineapple is a source of bromelain, a digestive enzyme used in some gentle peels. I do feel like this one soothed my skin (probably from the gel mask, which was cooling) and maybe helped clear it up a little.
Goodal Black Charcoal Mask Oxygen Radiance – Value $5.99
Goodal masks always have such luxurious packaging. This is a black mask sheet but there are some almost see-through areas. It has charcoal in it, which I find helps to clear out my pores. Apparently this one was supposed to result in bubbles showing up on the skin, which I can’t say I noticed, but I attribute any misuse to the lack of an information card with English instructions. I don’t have a smartphone to look these things up on the fly (and wouldn’t be able to see them without glasses or contacts anyway…) and I couldn’t read the Korean instructions on the back of the package and I’m not bringing my laptop into the bathroom. This also had quite a lot of plant extracts (lime, lemon, apple, orange, etc.) which would be sources of antioxidants and vitamins.
Leaders Step Solution BrighteningEX Black Pearl Mask – Value $3
This has pearl extract which is supposed to help treat uneven skin tone. (Actual pearl powder couldn’t penetrate the outer layer of the skin. An extract might, depending on what was used to extract it and what compounds came out.) This also has charcoal to help clear the pores, sodium hyaluronate for moisture, and niacinamide for brightening. This one did not interfere with the subsequent application of makeup, which was nice (I do masks in the morning, most of the time).
Tsaio Girls on Period Mask “Joyce” – Value $2.50
I think the name of this one is funny. I just don’t think you would find a product made for the US market with a name like this. I did use it at the appropriate time of the month but I’m not sure the timing made a whole lot of difference. This has willow bark extract, which is a source of salicylic acid that may help clear up period-associated breakouts. It also has witch hazel water, which can tone the skin, niacinamide for brightening, and allantoin to soothe rough skin. The first ingredient is something I hadn’t heard of before, “galactoarabinan,” but I guessed this was a polysaccharide (long sugar polymer) made up of galactose and arabinose. (I was right.) It is extracted from larch trees and is sometimes called “plant collagen” (as opposed to real collagen, which can only come from animals). Like other polysaccharides, it holds on to a lot of water near the surface of the skin, which may lead to a reduction in fine lines as well as to increased skin moisture. This mask was actually kind of low on serum and it did not interfere with putting on makeup right after.
Verdict: I calculated a value of $29.35 for the September 2017 Beauteque Mask Maven. That’s about $10 over the cost of the subscription plus shipping, which is wonderful for a K-beauty type of subscription. All the actual products were new to me this month (I was familiar with some of the brands already) and I liked the variety of brands, mask types and ingredients, etc. It was also nice to receive what I would consider to be a few premium masks in addition to some less expensive ones.
What did you think of the September 2017 Beauteque Mask Maven? Do you get any K-Beauty or Asian Beauty subscriptions?
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