Julep Maven Review

When I came home from work today I had a present waiting: my first Julep Maven box! And my last, for now, but more on that later.



Julep's Maven program is a subscription service much like Birchbox, Eco Emi, et al where you are billed monthly and sent a package in the mail. Julep Maven costs $19.99 a month, but I was able to get this box for only $5 (and there is no extra charge for shipping). How did I get it for so cheap? Read this post.

According to their website, each box contains $40+ worth of merchandise a month, but from what I've seen that translates into two nail polishes and some other gift. I am not a huge nail polish girl, so I feel like for $40+ worth of product I should get much more. But since this trial offer was so cheap, I figured, why not?



This is what the box looks like when I first opened it. There were some sheets on the top with details about the program, and the products were underneath inside of a black bag (photo of that behind the read more cut). I liked the introductory letter, it was actually kind of cute. The first line says "We jumped and cheered when your order came through (I hope you heard us!)." The English major in me wanted to tell them to just leave the exclamation point outside of the parenthesis; that would eliminate the need for a period. BUT I digress.



My box came with the above polishes: Lindsay, the dark burgundy shade, and Shania, the frosty silver/white/whatever it is. I knew that I would be getting these colors before I ordered, since when you join you fill out a survey that matches your style to a specific profile. The people at Julep then select colors to fit that style. I wasn't crazy about the silver, but I did really like the burgundy. I wear mostly reds and pinks, so I thought it would be a great fall/winter shade. There was also a hand scrub in my box which was 3 fl oz. To be completely honest, I bought the box mostly for the hand scrub! It's a decently-sized bottle (unfortunately no pictures of that one, the ones I took were too blurry and then I was too lazy to take another).



Here's the "Lindsay" shade. Pretty color, but see how streaky it looks? I wasn't happy with that at all, and I'm fairly certain that it's not due to my nail polish technique. The polish itself seemed very thick and gloppy to me. This is with two coats, no base coat or top coat. I think Julep's nail polishes cost something like $18 full priced, which definitely is not worth it to me (for any kind of nail polish). For a view of what the "Shania" shade looks like on, click the read more cut.

Bottom Line: I will not be continuing with Julep Maven. In fact, I already cancelled my subscription via email. I knew I was going to cancel right away anyway, since I don't have the budget for Birchbox and Eco Emi and another $20 box. Plus, like I said, nail polish isn't something I go crazy for.
That being said(!!), if the polishes were a better quality I would probably consider signing up again sometime in the future. Julep does have a cool feature where you can choose to skip a month, you just have to log in to your account and tell them so before the 25th of each month.
Read more about Julep Maven here, and more photos behind the cut!



The bag inside of the box. Sorry that I don't have any photos of it outside of the box, the ones I took were bad and I didn't feel like taking more.

The "Shania" shade. This is two coats, no base or top coats. I'm on the fence about this shade. It's okay, and I'll wear it again sometime, but I don't like how uneven it spreads on. Maybe with a base coat it will be better.