Beauteque Mask Maven is a monthly subscription box dedicated to masks. If you love trying new Korean sheet masks, this subscription is for you!
My Subscription Addiction paid for this box. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
About Beauteque Mask Maven
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 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)
Beauteque Mask Maven June 2019 Review
The number of sheet masks out there for sale must be incredibly large. Mask Maven almost never sends repeat items, and I discover something new every month:
The box came with this information card. This month has a botanical theme. The themes used to bear little relationship to the masks, but I really feel like they’ve been stepping it up lately and that there’s a better connection.
The YEON Everyday Natural Care Aloe Mask – Retail Value $1.50
This one comes from a product line with 12 different masks in it, each with a distinct featured ingredient and then some common ingredients. The aloe mask is categorized under “moisture” and that makes sense, as aloe is frequently considered a moisturizing ingredient. It is also soothing if you have irritated skin.
It’s a bit hard to tell from the product page, but it looks like there are also 7 plant extracts included in each and every mask from this line and they include things like chamomile (also soothing), licorice (commonly found in sheet masks), and green tea (source of antioxidants). I can see buying a bunch of masks from this line and using whichever one addresses your specific concern for the day but also getting the benefit of those 7 plant extracts every day.
It’s Skin Carrot Mask – Retail Value $1.99
This one is supposed to be brightening. I know carrot is a great source of vitamin A (as beta carotene), which is an antioxidant and may help fight free radical damage. This one has a rather short ingredients list, a lot of which I can identify as emulsifiers, thickeners, and preservatives. It is kind of interesting that using this mask didn’t differ significantly from using a mask with an ingredients list three times as long. Makes you wonder how many of those extra ingredients are necessary. (It’s also possible there’s an error in the ingredients list on the Beauteque site…)
This one has fragrance but it’s not a particularly carrot-like fragrance.
NOHJ Skinmaman Chamomile Mask – Retail Value $2.50
NOHJ packaging is beautiful. It’s hard to see, but this envelope was clear with printing on it, and the mask also had some gold outlines of flowers that made it seem extra luxurious. (As an aside, I prefer the outlines to a full-on gold colored sheet mask as those don’t allow any water from the serum to evaporate and leave my skin extra goopy afterwards.)
Chamomile, of course, is soothing (which is probably why it appears in so many of this month’s masks). This one has almost too many great ingredients to talk about but I’ll gloss over a few: fruits (lemon, kiwi, blueberry, etc.) for vitamins and antioxidants, moisturizing ingredients (sodium hyaluronate, aloe), anti-acne ingredients (tea tree oil), and tea leaf extract for even more antioxidants.
Esfolio Pure Skin Herb Essence Mask – Retail Value $2.20
This one says “herb” but the scent screams LAVENDER. Which is fine by me, as that’s a scent I like. This mask had a super thick serum and was very drippy and got all over my shirt (I mean, I was just wearing an old T-shirt so that wasn’t a big deal).
This has some other extracts including matricaria, which is soothing, and peppermint extract, which I guess is supposed to also be soothing or cooling. I don’t really like menthol in skincare (I have had some bad experiences with “plumping” lip glosses, I just find them uncomfortable) but I didn’t notice it so much here. This one was moisturizing and provided sort of a whole spa-like experience because of the combination of scent and skincare properties.
Etude House 0.2mm Therapy Air Mask – Retail Value $1.99
There are quite a lot of masks in this product line and I’m not sure, but there may have been some variation in which mask each subscriber received. I got this lotus one. The 0.2mm refers to the thickness of the mask sheet; this thickness is supposed to be very breathable, and I think it was.
This one has a super long ingredients list that hits a lot of the highlights of sheet masks (lavender oil, licorice root extract, ginger root extract, sodium hyaluronate, lemon extract, allantoin, etc.) so it will be full of moisturizing ingredients and also antioxidants. This has eucalyptus oil, which definitely helps soothe congested nasal passages and I wonder if it has the same effect on the skin? (Rest assured, this mask doesn’t smell like eucalyptus, or, indeed, much of anything.)
Farm Stay Real Essence Mango Mask – Retail Value $1.99
This has, as you might have guessed, mango extract. Of course it will have vitamin C and other antioxidants. It also has sodium hyaluronate (a long carbohydrate-derived polymer that holds on to water molecules near the surface of the skin, providing a temporary effect of minimizing the look of fine lines as well as general moisturizing properties).
This one also has a handful of thickeners and emulsifiers. The scent is fruity and tropical but, to me, was not particularly reminiscent of mango. (Your mileage may vary. As with any fragrance, interaction with one’s own skin chemistry may change the scent a little bit.)
MJ Care BSC Orchid Essence Mask – Retail Value $2.20
So if you were wondering, “callus” here refers to plant callus, which is a mass of dedifferentiated cells that, given the right conditions, can be cultured to grow into new plants of the type from which they were originally taken. And “BSC” on the packaging apparently stands for “botanical stem cell,” which is not a bad way to describe plant callus cells.
Anyway, this was a pretty standard moisturizing mask with ingredients like aloe and sodium hyaluronate (hence the language about reducing fine lines on the product page). Apparently it also contains minerals including calcium, magnesium, and zinc. There’s also purslane, which is soothing, and allantoin, which is supposed to increase smoothness if you have rough skin. Sodium hyaluronate used in industry is mostly a byproduct of poultry processing and allantoin is extracted from cow urine, so this one is not vegan (but you should probably not expect K-beauty products to be vegan).
Nature Republic Rose Moisture Mask – Retail Value $1.90
I can’t find a full ingredients list for this one. It also appears to have undergone a packaging change, but that is pretty common in the world of beauty products. If you like the scent of roses, this will appeal to you. It’s not an artificial scent at all, and it’s not super strong.
I felt like this one soothed my skin and the serum didn’t take too long to absorb. Rose extract has some antioxidants and vitamins which may help fight free radical damage (although don’t spend a long time out in the sun without a good SPF product as well!).
Esfolio Pure Skin Snail Essence Mask – Retail Value $2.20
This is from the same product line as the lavender mask up above, but the experience was quite different. It is not nearly so strongly scented and the serum level is lower (or else the serum is thicker) as this one did not drip all over my shirt.
This has snail secretion filtrate, which is a common moisturizing ingredient in K-beauty products. This ingredient is also supposed to enhance skin elasticity although I can’t really tell whether that happened after only one use. This one is also supposed to control sebum production and I think it did help with that because I tried this one on a Saturday and didn’t put makeup on afterwards (I typically wear pretty heavy oil control makeup so if I’d worn makeup, I wouldn’t be able to judge the effectiveness of the mask). This one also has purslane and sodium hyaluronate, which we’ve talked about above.
Verdict: I calculated a value of $18.47 for the June 2019 Beauteque Mask Maven. That’s about 50 cents lower than the cost of the package plus shipping on a month-to-month basis. However, coupons are usually available for this one, and you can always save with longer subscriptions. Also, of course, the value of this one averages out over time. For example, the May package had a super high value. And, of course, K-beauty prices are all over the place, depending on where you look for the items, how long you are willing to wait for them to arrive, etc. At any rate, I thought this month did a great job of sticking to the theme and I learned about a lot of new products, although at this point, all of the brands were familiar to me.
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? No, this was the June package. You have to sign up by the 15th to get a box for the month, so your first box would probably be August’s box and it will arrive in early September.
ACTIVE DEAL: Save 10% off of your subscription
CODE: SHEETFACED
Value Breakdown: At $18.95 for this box, you are paying approximately the following per item:
- Aloe mask $1.54
- Carrot mask $2.04
- Chamomile mask $2.56
- Herb essence mask $2.26
- Lotus mask $2.04
- Mango mask $2.04
- Orchid mask $2.26
- Rose mask $1.95
- Snail mask $2.26
Check out all of our past Mask Maven reviews and the best skincare boxes of 2019 as voted by MSA readers!
Keep track of your subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription list or wishlist!
What did you think of the June 2019 Beauteque Mask Maven? Do you get any K-Beauty or Asian Beauty subscriptions?
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