Wednesday, September 22, 2010

ELF Haul Mineral Brushes, Neutral Eye Beauty Book and Hypershine Glosses

I got my latest order from ELF Cosmetics today. I have an initial review here of their new mineral brushes, the neutral eye beauty book and some of their hypershine glosses. I was really excited about the new mineral brushes since I am a brush junkie but, I gotta say straight up, these brushes are not great, which is a disappointment, read on for all the stuff that I got from ELF!


After getting the Smokey Eye Beauty Book earlier, I decided to pick up the Neutral Eye Edition as well since I liked it so much. I am more of a neutral eye girl anyway and I liked all the purple-toned colours that were in this one. The colours are very pigmented, however some are very soft, meaning you get a lot of product out at once, they are super smooth, but I wonder about the staying power because it's so buttery. I can do a full review later on if you guys are interested.


I've been obsessed with ELF's Hypershine glosses recently and almost have them all now, however I only recently found some nice opaque creme ones which I am happy with. The ones I mean are Flirt and Bubblegum in the picture above, as you can tell these are nicely opaque, Bubblegum especially is really really nice, I recommend this one for sure. The Frenzied Fuchsia is a new colour (notice how the packaging is slightly different) it looks great in the tube, despite the giant air bubble that was in mine, and even better on the site, it looks lilac, but swatched it's clear, huge disappointment. Fairy and Joy are too shimmery for my liking. The bottom one in the top pic is a Luscious Lipstick, slightly different than the Hypershine glosses, I will do a full review of these soon too.


And lastly, the new mineral brushes, lots of people are probably wondering about these and my initial impression is not a favourable one. I picked up 3 of the face brushes: powder, complexion and angled blush brush, they retail for $5 each. Everyone is wondering why these are so much, but all of ELF mineral line is more expensive, so the brushes are too, there is a 50% off mineral items on right now until October 12, 2010, so it's a good time to order if you want these, enter the code "50MIN" with any $20 order.

These brushes have synthetic, anti-bacterial taklon bristles. The bristles are soft, but the bristles are also quite thin and floppy. The brushes smelled like paint when I received them, and the white bristles reminded me of the Loew Cornell craft store brushes that I have. The powder brush is my biggest disappointment, it's huge and doesn't really work for anything besides setting powder because it's not dense enough, it resembles the Complexion brush from ELF's Studio Line. The complexion brush here reminds me a lot of the Ecotools blush brush, same shape and performs the same way, but I prefer the Ecotools cause it doesn't smell funky. The angled blush brush is just okay, very small and not very dense. I would not recommend these mineral brushes and will not be buying anymore, sorry ELF.

Oh and look at how much ELF paid to ship these items to me, $20! I only paid $6.95! If you are from Canada, you probably know this trick already, but in case you don't.. when you pay with paypal you only get charged $6.95 and avoid getting the extra $8 tacked on for Canadian shipping, I've been doing this for over a year now and it always works, however I gotta say I feel a tad bad after seeing how much they paid to ship it!

If you want any in-depth reviews please let me know below.

12 comments:

kali said... Best Blogger Tips

Gosh they basically paid YOU -not the other way around. That's crazy, especially if you only have to spend $20 to get half off. $10 + $8 (regular shipping price) is still less that the shipping price.

Here in the U.S., they overchage us. I think it costs like $5 to ship it to me but I pay the $6.95.

Justine (Productrater) said... Best Blogger Tips

@kali - I just looked at my receipt and I used a free shipping code for spending $25, so I got $6.95 off, should of done 50% off but most of the time that's only $7.50 max off anyway and having ordered so many times already sometimes it tells me the code has been used before. So I paid $0 to ship, paid $25 and it cost them $20 to ship!

Isabel said... Best Blogger Tips

Mmm.. Bubblegum looks good. I had the baby lips and blossom but before I got around to actually using it, I sniffed it and the extremely sweet sugary smell was such a turn off, I sold it =/

BeautyRandomBlog (Sara) said... Best Blogger Tips

Thanks for the review, very useful:) Have a nice day!

cleansetonemoisturize said... Best Blogger Tips

Nice haul. We are so unlucky with our E.L.F. store here in the Philippines because the studio line brushes and some studio line products has not been released here yet. I would love to try the beauty books too. Thanks for the review. :)

Weej said... Best Blogger Tips

The colours in the neutral beauty book looks great, an in-depth review would be lovely :]

Sofia said... Best Blogger Tips

i luv that palette it is a great deal....bubblegum l/g looks soooo pretty!!

Junerose said... Best Blogger Tips

It would be great if you could take some photos of how the glosses look on your lips, especially bubblegum and flirt. Great deal that you got on the shipping ;)

Justine (Productrater) said... Best Blogger Tips

@Junerose - sure will do soon!

Unknown said... Best Blogger Tips

Wow, the shipping is funny. Good way to do it :0 The Hypershine glosses must be good. I want to buy Bubblegum as well!

Noriko said... Best Blogger Tips

I often come and read yr lovely blog ! But, it is my first comment. E.L.F. products are so interesting. I am wondering if they can ship to JPN ?!?

rose011 said... Best Blogger Tips

NOO WAY! YOU'RE JOKING ME! With paypal you don't pay the extra 8$? You are my hero! I never knew that and I kept myself from ever buying from elf bc the shipping cost was just ridiculous! Thank you!!!! You just made my day!