Handmade Beauty Box Subscription Review – February 2015

Handmade Beauty Box is a new subscription service that sends you everything you need to make your own beauty supplies! I love all things DIY, so I was excited to try it!

This box was sent to us for review purposes. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).

The Subscription Box: Handmade Beauty Box

The Cost: $31.50 per month with free shipping

The Products: All materials needed to create several containers of one DIY beauty product per month

Ships to: US only

This month we made cuticle balm! I don’t use cuticle balm that often. Fortunately, it doubles as a lip balm!

Included in the package was a set of directions printed on a folded piece of 8×11 paper, in color, but unfortunately, a little of the oil spilled on the instructions. It didn’t make for a good picture. The instructions were very thorough, however, and included not only instructions on how to make the cuticle balm, but also great instructions on how to give yourself a very thorough manicure!

These are all of the materials that were included. I needed only to supply a bowl (I used a microwave-safe measuring cup so it would pour more easily), a spoon, and my microwave. They also included a little emery board and a manicure push stick so that I could give myself a proper manicure after finishing my cuticle balms!

Creating the cuticle balm was very simple and quick. I put the shea butter, beeswax, and avocado oil together in my bowl and microwaved in 30 second increments until it was all melted and blended together. After microwaving, I added the passion fruit – rose essential oil and mixed. Then I carefully filled the little tins with the mixture and allowed to cool for a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, I applied the labels to the tin lids. This was actually the difficult part! The instructions just said “apply labels to lids,” or something casual to that effect, but I got a little baffled! The labels were printed on an adhesive paper, but it was not perforated like I expected, so I had to actually go and cut out all the labels, peel them off individually, fit and apply them. This took way longer than making the balm itself! I think it was worthwhile, though, because the finished product looks really cute.

See how cute they look? The supplies provided gave me enough balm to fill the 15 included tins almost exactly, with the last tin being just 3-4 drops short.

Verdict: I enjoyed making these little balms and they smell amazing! My entire family suffers from chapped lips all winter long, so they will definitely go to good use. I know exactly what’s in them because I made them! They are made from all natural ingredients. I used one on my lips all weekend, and it was very effective on chapped lips. So, the product itself is great!

As far as value goes, yes, you can find and buy bulk lip balm for much less than $2 apiece, but that’s not a fair comparison. I think a more fair comparison would be to look at cuticle balms on Etsy, where they do start at about $2 apiece plus shipping for handmade balms. However, that still doesn’t give you the knowledge and experience you gain from making it yourself. Moreover, you wouldn’t give someone a tube of Chapstick as a gift, but I would totally give these out as little gifts. In fact, I think this year I will be making up little gift bags of things I have made myself to give to the kids’ teachers at the end of the year. It’s so much more special to give presents you have made yourself, and in this case I made 15 of them in under an hour. You can’t beat that for value!

What do you think of Handmade Beauty Box?