A friend of mine recently gifted me her extra Sephora Insider Beauty Box from Make Up For Ever that she was able to redeem after acquiring 500 points. In Sephora terms, that means spending at least 500 bucks. The box comes packaged with 4 items: a full-size artist liner, mini artist plexi-gloss, three-color artist shadow and sens’eyes eye makeup remover.

I’m basically a stickler to my Lancome black pencil, but I was pretty impressed with the artist liner. It’s a twist-up pencil that’s relatively thin. It’s not as smudgeable or pigmented as the Lancome pencil, but it definitely stays in place better. I wear contacts and sometimes have a hard time seeing after applying liner to my inner rim, but I didn’t seem to have this problem with the Make Up For Ever liner.

On to the lip gloss… Ok so I HATE lip gloss in general. I know it’s an obvious makeup staple, but it is the one look I refuse to wear, simply because I cannot stand sticky lips. The feeling makes me cringe. I did try this one though, and just as I suspected…Sticky. I actually didn’t enjoy anything about this gloss – the texture, the glitter, or the pinkish-nude that left a frosty sheen on my lips that made me feel like I was back in middle school. In summation: I understand why they’re giving this out for free.

The artist shadow looks like a full sized product on the box, but when I opened it up, I discovered that it’s just three swatches of pigment on a piece of paper. Kind of a bummer, but this IS a free box, so I get it. However, the colors are beautiful, as is the pigmentation. I actually am going to purchase the coppery-rose color (D-826) as it is the perfect shade to compliment green eyes.

Lastly, I tested the sens-eyes waterproof eye makeup remover. Just a tiny bit applied to a cotton swap wiped my eyes completely clean and didn’t bother my contacts or give me blurred vision. I will definitely be taking this mini the next time I travel.