ELF Essential Lipsticks in Posh, Flirtatious & Sociable

Hiya!

Today I have a few ELF lipsticks from their Essentials range to show you. These lipsticks are £1.37 at the moment, down from £1.95. I'm not sure if they're on offer or are being discontinued as many shades aren't on the website at the moment, including Posh which I have here. I hate it when that happens. EDIT: ELF will soon no longer be for sale in Europe. See here. Boooooooo.

ELF Essential Lipsticks in Posh, Flirtatious & Sociable
Edit: Flirtatious
First up, packaging. You're not getting great packaging at this price point, but it is functional and reasonably sturdy. My one bugbear with it is the bullets are stiff and a little squeaky. All ELF packaging has a drawback - the shade name (if present at all on the actual product) will be a tiny sticker about 5mm across which will wear away before long so you have no idea what shade you're using after some time. I use a fine permanent marker to write shade names on my ELF products so if I want to re-buy I know what shade I need.

ELF Essential Lipsticks in Posh, Flirtatious & Sociable

Posh is a deep pink toned red which looks darker in the bullet than it does on my lips. It's very moisturising, doesn't have a discernible smell and lasts the standard couple of hours that most affordable moisturising lipsticks do on me.

Flirtatious is a pink, again lighter on the lips than in the bullet (it's lighter than my natural lip colour, in fact) and follows the same pattern as Posh - moisturising, no discernible smell and lasts a couple of hours.

Sociable is another reddish pink and is different in formula to the other two. It has far less sheen, although I wouldn't say it's totally matte and I would say it's the only true opaque of the three. It smells of berries, is less moisturising which adds to its longevity on me (about 3 hours) and feels slightly gritty as it has fine silver sparkle in it. You can only see the barest hint of glitter in the on-lip swatches, in fact oddly it shows up best if you blot it to remove some of the sheen and let the glitter shine through.

ELF Essential Lipsticks in Posh, Flirtatious & Sociable
Posh, Flirtatious, Sociable

ELF Essential Lipsticks in Posh, Flirtatious & Sociable
Typo - Flirtatious!

I'm also wearing Sociable here.


I'm the kind of person who looks up what different lipstick shades look like on different people and the difference that can occur from different skintones and natural lip colours is vast. Flirtatious looks much more of a hotter pink on people with lighter lip colouring than me and Sociable looks a lot less red on other people. I guess the moral is let swatches only guide you so far, and try things out for yourself if they're affordable.

What are you up to this weekend? I think we're having a chilled one. We keep saying that, but it hasn't happened yet. Have a good one whatever you're up to!

Thanks for reading.
Leah xoxo