ELF Studio Matte Lip Colour Pencil: Praline

ELF is a brand that seldom disappoints me.  The products are truly budget products (yes, I'm looking at you High Street brands who think that a £4 million mascara constitutes an ordinary budget purchase) and they not only have a wide colour range but they're also constantly bringing out new products..and products that people actually want.

The ELF Studio Matte Lip Colour Pencils come in four different shades and I have Praline.  They also come in Coral, Natural and Tea Rose.  I find it a bit funny that Praline is the colour that looks more like my natural lip colour whereas Natural is more pinky..but it'd be the natural colour for a lot of lighter skinned people.

I will get the one negative out of the way first.  The smell.  It smells like those plastic chairs that little children have.  However, I can forgive this as the smell vanishes and everything else about them is fantastic.  And the smell fades after the first few uses.

Also, you see the smudge? The brand new pencil is not like this.  Mine has been in my bag and my hands for a long time, hence the smudge.  You see those white dots a bit further down? That's where it said "Praline" but yet again, that's worn off.

It calls itself a pencil but to me, it's more like a matte lipstick with a bit of slip to it.  I do have a pencil (from another brand) which is a pencil in the traditional sense and I cannot get away with wearing that with nothing over the top whereas I can just whack the ELF one on and go about my business.

My favourite things about this product are that firstly, it's a twist up product (no sharpening needed) and secondly, the more you use it, the rounder the head gets so application improves.

Actually, I lied.  I have another favourite thing.  It gives me the lip colour that I feel I should have been born with.  I've got the annoying "one lip darker than the other" thing going on and this imparts the same colour onto both lips.

See how natural that looks?

And it takes gloss very well.  I'm not too sure where my teeth are in this photo but I do have a full set somewhere in there.

A lot of matte lip products have a tendency to dry your lips out but I really don't feel that the ELF pencil does that.  I've used it non stop and my lips haven't dried out at all.  I've also not been using as much Carmex so what does that tell you?  If anything actually, my lips feel softer after using this than they do after I've used moisturising lipsticks.

For the princely sum of £3.50, you can't get much better.  My only criticism is that ELF should make more colours, if there were more colours that I could wear, I'd totally buy those.  Click here to buy one!  My timing is obviously not my strong suit (I am Punjabi after all..our clocks run three hours behind everyone elses) as a few days ago, these were selling for £1 on the ELF website..and I bought three backups.