Thursday 6 September 2012

e.l.f. Various Products

By Megs
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I recently got a huge haul of e.l.f. products. For $20. And like I said, it was difficult to fill my cart up with $20 worth of product because the prices are so low! Unfortunately, I did not take a pic of that haul when it arrived – I didn’t know at the time (last week) that I wanted to be a beauty blogger. So I was thinking about reviewing my new e.l.f. products, wondering which were my second faves after the awesomely awesome Nourishing Cuticle Pen. And I was like “The Lip Tints? Nope, don’t really like them. The matte nail polish top coat? Nope, don’t really like it. The All Over Color sticks?

Eh, they’re only ok. Oh. That’s everything I bought. I don’t really like any of it!” Except my cuticle pen. That, I love.

e.l.f. Essential Matte Finisher Clear Nail Polish
How pumped was I to find a matte topcoat for nails on e.l.f.’s site? It’s 3 free, thus meets my standard for nail polish. And it’s only $2!?! I’ve been yearning for the essie one but haven’t found it locally and if I order it online from Nail Polish Canada I have to order $29 worth of product (not hard!) if I want free shipping because obviously. So here I am shopping on e.l.f. and they have one for the fraction of the price of essie’s? Not a difficult decision to make. First time trying it, I put it on and no surprise, it looks great! Perfectly matte! Such a cool effect on my nails! But it did make my polish a little streaky. Streaky to the point where even after 3 coats of colour I could see some natural nail colour peeking through. Well, I really enjoy doing my nails, but I’m not actually very good at it so blame the bumbling operator, not the nail polish. Then I put my drying drops on (Nicōle by OPI, btw) and all of a sudden the matte wasn’t so matte anymore. Hmm, ok, so that happened. Drying drops were a definite necessity after all the layers of polish I’d used so it’s not like I could have avoided using them to maintain the matteness. Moving along. The next day at work I of course used my cuticle pen and also lotioned up my hands like a maniac, because I’m kind of a maniac about lotioning up my hands at work. After less than a day of wear, the matte top coat was not matte. I don’t even know what it was. Kinda gritty looking is the best way I can describe it. I also washed and moisturised my face twice in that time, and washed my hands who knows how many times. Oh yeah, and it smells weird, too. Really weird. Like, weirder than the average nail polish. Maybe all matte nail polish smells that way, I don’t know. All in all? Not worth your $2. Are other matte topcoats like that? What’s your experience?

e.l.f. Mineral Moisturizing Lip Tint SPF 8
My dry lips. I am forever in search of just the right product for them. I have been lusting after ilia’s Tinted Lip Conditioners, I really feel like they might be that magic product. But they are out of my price range at the moment, especially because I’ll have to pay shipping and all of a sudden I’m looking at $30+ to try a product. What if I don’t like it? I digress. OK, so e.l.f.’s lip tint. Didn’t moisturise. In fact, it did the opposite and dried out my lips. No surprise, almost everything does, especially cheap stuff. I bought Pink and Natural. The colours are nice. They smell, actually, kind of crayon-ish. And they dried out my lips and even for the bargain price of $3 a pop, I would say it is not worth the expenditure.

e.l.f. Essential All Over Color Sticks
These are categorised as blush on e.l.f.’s site so I thought they were blush when I added them to my cart. I don’t really know if they are blushes or not. The name of the products (All Over Color Stick) sort of indicates they’re not a blush. So are they blushes or aren’t they? These are the existential questions of my life, people! (Not really). OK, so, I pretty much decided that these will be blush for me. At $1 each, I bought 3 because why not? I bought Pink Lemonade, Persimmon, and Golden Peach. Golden Peach – so pretty! Understated! Maybe not as dark as I would like. Persimmon – also pretty! Also understated! Also maybe not as dark as I would like. Pink Lemonade – *record scratch* whoa, dude. That is some stroooooong lemonade on my cheeks. It’s a pretty colour. Darker, much darker than I expected. I looked like I just came in from -40°C. To translate for southerners: very rosy cheeked. So rosy cheeked, in fact, I had to wipe the majority of it off. And then, of course, goodbye primer, BB cream and foundation.

So only Pink Lemonade is really dark enough to be a blush, Persimmon and Golden Peach are so light that they really do better mixed with Pink Lemonade. I am “getting to know” Pink Lemonade, trying to find the exact amount to put on my cheeks. There’s a pretty fine line between not enough and *record scratch* whoa, dude. And the thing with this product, and you’ll know where I’m coming from if you’ve ever tried cheap makeup, it’s hard. I was thinking that Pink Lemonade would be perfect if I just mix it with something colourless to just tone down the darkness and the hard texture. Something like Vaseline but obviously not Vaseline because that is a by-product of crude oil so I don’t want to smear it on my body. I have this kelp body butter that would probably work but I don’t really need to be oiling up my face with body butter in the middle of summer. In winter? Heck yeah! My poor old face needs whatever moisture it can get. So I’ll try that because, as the Starks say, winter is coming.

In the meantime, I need some new blush. I should probably just get an ilia Multi-Stick. Has anyone out there tried those? What do you think? Should I get one?

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