Review: 29 Grape Seed Age Protecting

Sample Envelope

Subscription Box: Lip Factory

Company: 29 Cosmetics

Product: Samples from their skin care collection which can be seen here.

The sample packaging

This seemed like a bit of a strange sample to get from Lip Factory. They generally stick to just makeup, and low to mid-range companies at that. This is a tiny sample from a skin care line that hails from the grape-country along Hwy 29 (hence the name) and uses "grape extract" in all of their products, along with a mix of other organic and non-organic ingredients.

Below I wanted to give a better idea of the size of the samples themselves so I added the quarter for comparison. Really, skin care companies need to realize that if we can't get multiple uses out of a sample in order to tell if it works, we aren't any more likely to buy it than if we hadn't gotten a sample at all. 

From left to right: Cream Cleanser, Serum Extract, Eye Emulsion, Night Moisture.

I tried these out over the course of a day that I didn't wear makeup so I could really see their effect on my skin. The common theme of these samples were the smells. And not in a positive way.

The Cream Cleanser ($16.19/oz) was similar to other cream cleansers I have used and wasn't anything to get excited about. The smell however reminded me very strongly of mothballs. Specifically that smell mothballs give to a closet full of clothes. So yeah, I was rubbing old-closet smell on my face, and I wasn't happy about it. At least it was a cleanser, so I got to wash it off, unlike...

The Serum Extract ($163.55/oz!), which I used directly after cleansing since that seemed to be the right thing to do. There weren't really any good directions for these samples in the literature, so that might have been incorrect, but if you don't give me instructions and I use the product incorrectly that is their fault. This stuff made my face feel extremely oily. And the smell was quite reminiscent of a dusty room. One of those rooms you walk into in an old house and your footsteps create puffs. That kind of dust. Again, wasn't too thrilled to be patting on dust flavored cream.

The Serum Extract made my face oily enough that after a few hours I skipped ahead and washed my face for the night. Afterwards I used the Eye Emulsion ($140.19/oz!). This was the one product I was ok with. The texture was exactly how I like eye serums: not too oily, not too thick, and not watery. This was also the only sample with enough product to have used twice, but it wasn't resealable so... There wasn't a weird smell with this one, which was a nice change of pace, but then I got to... 

The Night Moisture ($55/oz) which I used in place of my usual moisturizer. Like the Cream Cleanser, it was alright, but not spectacular. It's smell was actually pleasant once it had absorbed into my skin for a little while. Right out of the packet it was strange... A lot like the "dusty" smell of the Serum Extract, but with a touch of something sweet. I like to imagine some passive-aggressive employee at the company getting tired of the bad smells they are around all day and sneaking something pleasant into this one.

Final Thoughts

All in all I cannot believe that these products cost as much as they do considering how they smell. I don't like a ton of perfumes in my facial routine, but these on the whole just did not smell good at all. Since I didn't have much to use I can't reliably comment on how they work, but I don't know that I would have been able to continue using them long enough to really test due to the smells. Maybe that's why they send out the small samples.