Soooooo....as I mentioned last week, I ordered some things from ELF and was waiting for them to arrive so I can review them. I haven't been purchasing make-up much lately because I have a ton and I don't have a lot of income to play with, but I found an old gift certificate and used it to buy the make-up. Don't you love when you find those old gift cards, fun stuff. I received everything today and wanted to share my feelings about the products.
My total order consisted of three beauty manuals (12 shadows, one pencil, and a run of the mill eye shadow applicator) in smoky, natural and bright. I also ordered their eye transformer quad, a false eyelash kit and brow stencils. While I haven't tested out everything just yet, I did play around with the beauty manuals.
My first observation is that their packaging is pretty terrible. Since eye shadows are so fragile, I was really expecting at least bubble wrap around the products instead of just a bubble-wrapped envelope, so I was pretty disappointed to see that one of my eye transformer shades was a little broken. My first observation of the products is that the colors are a little drab compared to what they looked like online, the lashes are really cheap and plastic looking compared to my NYX lashes, but I do like that the pack came with a little clip that helps apply the lashes and a stand to store them in. Now on to the actual review of the beauty books.
Thus far I have only put on a couple of the colors from the bright eye palette, but I did swatch a couple of the other colors from the smoky and natural beauty book. I don't think they have good pay off and I noticed when I was applying color it is definitely a shadow with more comparable properties to a drugstore brand, such as Maybelline, Almay or Covergirl. They are kind of dry and I had to dab color on and go back multiple times to pick up color to make sure I had enough on my lids. I wasn't wearing a primer when I did this, but there have been many occasions when I wore my Too Faced, Smashbox, Manly and Coastal Scents colors without a primer and the only issue was ease in blending. This is not the case with the ELF shadows. They are not very moist or fine in particulates, so it takes more effort. I think the look I made with them was pretty, but I wouldn't rate them in my top ten.
The pencil that came with the books is also not great. A brown pencil came with the natural set and a black pencil came with the other two sets. The pencil is very dry and doesn't have good color extraction. I could barely see it go on and it came off very uneven. I definitely have found better liners by other brands including Urban Decay, Milani, and Studio Gear. I probably will not be using the pencils at all.
Overall, I am not a huge fan of ELF and I find this very frightening for one reason. After ordering the products I looked at a bunch of reviews of their products and one was talking about how they used to have worse quality. So, if this is what they consider better quality, I can't imagine what it was before. I would say; however, the value isn't bad. I bought three beauty books on a deal (3 for $10) of which usually they run $5 a piece. I think even at their regular price, $5 dollars isn't bad for 12 shadows, you get your money's worth. Still, I would probably opt for spending more and getting more shadows by ordering Manly or Coastal Scents. I am going to try their other products soon and will report back with my thoughts on those. Perhaps ELF is better in some areas than others. If you disagree with my assessment, please share. Perhaps the quality of the palettes isn't as great as their singles or other products they carry. I just call it like I see it and thus far, I am not seeing greatness, but I am not completely unhappy with my purchase either.
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