ELF Mineral Eyeshadow Primer Review

I believe this ELF product is no stranger to anyone now. =)



I got this product pic from the website, and it seems they only have one color for this primer which is "Sheer".

And this is mine. =)

Taken this pic near to my eye, so it's an eye primer if you don't get the reason behind it. haha. (lame I know! :P)

This elf mineral eyeshadow primer comes in a box like this. With the description and details.



Color indicator.


Slick-thin packaging too! Thinner than my Crazy Rumor's Lipbalm.


The applicator.

Similar with UDPP's wand right? :)

Now here comes the SHEER colored primer.

pic below: application of primer on my finger (before and after).

Doesn't look "sheer" to me. Maybe it should call them "skin colored"?

Anyway, since I got my TFSI, I can only show you how both of them differ with each other.

In real life, TFSI felt more creamier and thicker than ELF's mineral primer. :)

If you wonder what TFSI is.. here's a random pic that I've taken with the other day. =P

You can read more about them later if you want to. :)

On to the reviews!

From ELF website:-

This gentle and completely sheer Eyeshadow Primer has key vitamins A, C and E to help prevent aging and moisturizes the skin. The formula glides on easily and disappears instantly to create longer-lasting, crease-proof eyeshadow. The Mineral Eyeshadow Primer is designed to be used with your favorite mineral eyeshadow to provide ultimate staying power for beautiful and vibrant color that lasts. 100% mineral based with no parabens, no preservatives and no chemical dyes.

Application tip:

Apply a small amount to the eyelid and blend in. Use as a base prior to applying eyeshadow.

Price:$3 (compared to $17 for TFSI, this is super-cheap! :P )

My thoughts:
The description sure lures me to buy them! Vit A, C and E that comes with the primer for just $3?! Are you kidding me? ha! I couldn't imagine a primer that can actually help prevent aging! lol! (l.a.m.e) Oh well. But let me show you how it does "magic" to my veins can? =P



As you know, I have those typical heavy lids that comes with free veins :P. This primer actually does help a little in "concealing" them. So cool right?

But as for this statement "The formula glides on easily and disappears instantly to create longer-lasting, crease-proof eyeshadow.", I don't really agree with them. Glides on smoothly (YES), disappears instantly (still okay) but this create longer-lasting, crease-proof eyeshadow is nadda. I wore this primer to work at 7am but it creases at the inner corner of my eye by 2pm. By the time I reaches home at 8pm, I can see a "divider" at my eyelid with some oils in between (eeks!). Because of this, my non-waterproof mascara smudges a little too! -_-

I have also heard some bloggers doesn't like the "smell" of this primer. I didn't get any kind of weird smell when I first open it. However, after some time, this primer smell like "burnt rubber" (some sort!). Not heavy but very light if you do smell them on purpose. LOL!

Overall, this primer works quite good IMO. I'm saying this is because I still see most of my eyeshadow intact for 7 long hours. :) For $3, I wouldn't much complain because it does what it suppose to do (except the aging thing). =)

Last but not least, the ingredients:-


PS: I couldn't compare this with their $1 eyelid primer since I have never tried them before.

If you have tried them and felt otherwise, do let me know! =)

MAC Prep + Prime Eye - Light Review

I actually wanted to do a review on the MAC concealers but felt lazy. So I'll do a shorter one instead. XD (the lazy bug attacks again! :P)


MAC Prep + Prime Eye. This was actually one of my very first purchases from MAC. I didn't read or research before buying at that time since I was still am a MAC noob anyway.. :D. To be frank, I never knew such product exist since it was bought by my mom when she was in KL.. :



The picture above looks nice right?!

Here's how it looks like after years many many days of using it. :P


Gross right? :P What to do.. last time no use brush ma.. :P

The back of the base.


Here's some result pictures (sorry for the bad quality pics.. I took these photos many years months ago. :P)

The color of this base is yellowish. The medium one is pinkish.. not sure about the other darker tone one though.

Comparison on a random color:



flash photography.

I'm not sure why the P+P eye eats up my color. It became matte instead of shimmery. Maybe it likes to eat shimmers? haha.

The Product: MAC Prep + Prime Eye
Price: RM65+ (roughly) for 5g / 0.17oz or USD16.50

From MAC's Webbie

A light textured cream to wear on the eyes as an undercoat to eye makeup. Primes the lids. Smooths textures, neutralizes lid colour. Use under eye shadow, pigments, paints and concealers.

My thoughts:
Frankly speaking, this was one of the "lao yah" (worst) primers that I've came across with. Even my NYX Jumbo Eyepencil wins over this. No doubt it glides on smoothly as this is a cream base, but it creases on my lid because it became too "oily" at the end of the day. -_- The texture itself is a little too creamy as well. With almost the price like this, I would recommend to take UDPP or TFSI instead.

However, it wins over other eye base as it has 3 colors to choose from: Light, Medium and Medium Dark. :D

I'm not sure if other users has the same issue as mine but feel free to drop me a comment if you have tried them before. :)

Making Eyeshadows "POP" ...

By looking at the pic above, it doesn't do much justice. Let me explain more below.

Kindly note that I'm not comparing against eye bases. I just wanted to show the difference between using these products below...



Looking familiar? :)

Let me explain further.

The first one...
Mineral Eyeshadow Sealant. I'm not sure if we can get this locally but I got this from MAD Minerals some time back.



This comes in a liquid form, but quite watery for my liking. More like an eyeliner sealant rather than an eyeshadow sealant.

Second one...
MAC Butternutty Shadestick.


How it looks like..


The third one..
NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow pencil in Milk. I think most people should have known them by now. :P

The ingredients of this pencil..


Last but not least, the "high-end" eyeshadow primer by Too Faced. :)



You may asked why TFSI? The reason is because normally we either apply our eyeshadow without any canvas/bases on our skin, but nowadays, people believed that by using primer, the shadows will "POP". But we shall see what happens when we compared against the other 3 below.

Normally I'll compared against this three things...
1. TFSI (Too Faced Shadow Insurance)
2. MAC Butternutty Shadestick
3. NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencil in Milk



But since I still got my sealant, I'll include it into my review. :)

The more detailed swatches of these "bases"...


I compared these outcomes with the normal eyeshadow and some random MAC pigments.


For a start, I go with MAC pigments first in Pinked Mauve and Tea Time.

Do you noticed any difference?

If you look closely, with NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow pencil in Milk, Tea Time pigment looked a little darker. But on with the rest of the bases, the looked normal. The same goes with Pinked Mauve pigment. I guess the pigment itself is already sufficient to go on its own (just like Gardenia bread :P).

Ok, so let's move on with the normal eye shadows.

Can you see the difference? :D

Maybe this will help you a little more. :)




NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow pencil really shows some difference between the other three. The colors are more vibrant looking, don't you think so? Just take look at those eye shadows applied without anything underneath! The pink shadows looks really "blahhhh" to me.


MAC Butternutty shadestick does quite a good job too. But it does not showed up so vibrant like what NYX did. It gives a more "velvety" feel to it.

I did compared them both again with other colors.


Overall, for myself, NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencils are really a great tool and underbase if you want to make your eye shadows "POP". The reason being is because it has quite a lot of wax in it's ingredients so that it makes the texture more sticky and silky.

But does it crease? If you use it alone, of coz it will crease. But if an eye shadow applied above them, it stays on beautifully (but this may not be the same for other people). :)

However, one reason that I don't quite like about NYX is that it takes some effort to remove them. Because of the waxy ingredients, it tends to stick on like UHU on my skin. :P

About MAC Butternutty shadestick, even though it gives a velvety effect to the shadows, but it is so hard to blend them on the skin!! It is not as silky as NYX Jumbo E/S pencil, also it leaves some chunk "glitters" if it is not blended evenly. -_-" Stroking this onto the eye is not a problem, but blending is a huge problem to me. I have to do some sort of "Rubbing" with my fingers and the eye brushes doesn't seem to work together also. -_-"

As for the Mineral Eye Sealant by MAD Minerals. I don't know what to say. Ha ha. Coz it doesn't really seal any eyeshadow to me. It dries on pretty quickly after I applied them onto my eye. But guess what, it leaves a patch straight on to the skin without letting me blend them. So I guess it works more like an eye liner sealant rather than an eye shadow sealant. :)

In short, here's the summary of these four things:
NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencil (From Nonpareil boutique): $3.50
MAC Butternutty shadestick: $16.50
Too Faced Shadow Insurance: $17
MAD Mineral Eye Shadow Sealant: $7

From the prices above, I do recommend NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencils since it is cheap and they have many other colors as well. As for TFSI, it really is a great primer like I reviewed about it before (HERE). It is just like a make up base, that gives an extra "protection" to our skin (our skin area around the eyes are really thin and wrinkles do form easily if we do not take care of it) and also to "lock" our eye make up to prevent them from creasing and fade. :)

Too Faced Shadow Insurance rawks

Eeek! I've been MIA for too long. Blame it all on the ...
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Cute right? I was really enjoying my trip to Perth and it was so much fun especially I can take my mind off work for a while..

OK, back to the topic.

I bought Too faced shadow insurance a while back by joining a spree. It took about 2 weeks plus to reach Malaysia but it was all worth the money, IMO.

This is Too Faced Shadow Insurance (TFSI).



Most of the beauty bloggers did a review about this TFSI and some even compared this with the all time favourite Urban Decay Primer Portion (UDPP).

But I do not owned that yet. I can only compare this with my MAC Prep & Prime for Eyes.

Quoted from Sephora / Too Faced's website:

This is your full-coverage insurance policy against all fading, creasing, melting, blurring, oil slicked, and hard-to-blend eyeshadow accidents. Our silicone based eyeshadow primer transforms any eyeshadow into a perfectly blendable, color-drenched, intensified version of itself, then locks it down perfectly until you take it off. This soothing formula evens out the skintone on your lids and smoothes lines while securing a barrier between the oils of your skin and your makeup, so no shadow catastrophes will ever happen again.

Well, the description sure does match this item in reality...


This is how it looks like. It is a cream-like type of eye base, not a liquid-type of eye base.



This is the result: (pardon the eye brows, ya)


Price: USD17 (about RM65 with the currency exchange 1:3.8)
Size: 0.35oz
Overall review:
I felt that TFSI is slightly on the expensive side of an eye primer / eye base. It is also more expensive than UDPP where they cost USD16 for 0.34oz. Compared to my MAC eye P+P, TFSI wins hands down for its smoothness and ceaseless result. TFIS is also lightweight and the primer absorbs into the skin almost instantly compared to my MAC P+P. From the results above, TFIS also did covers up my veins (around my lids!), and I'm sure it does help for the undereye area too!

Does it cease with my eyeshadows?

Nope, so far it doesn't cease my lids nor it eats up my eyeshadows/pigments. Staying power for my eyeshadows/liners are good too!

The cons that I can think of is the unavailability of the product in Malaysia, and also the $ for this small little tube.

Overall rating:


PS: One tube of TFIS can sure last you for quite some time even if you are a heavy user.