Review: ELF Essential Liquid Eyeliners

If you watch my YouTube videos, you have probably deduced that I am an ELF fanatic! I absolutely cannot deny myself makeup at those prices, especially when the quality is 99% of the time acceptable! I have 4 of these eyeliners, and instead of reviewing individual colors for this product, I decided to review them as a whole since they all perform similarly.

The colors I have are: Coffee, Plum, Black, & Copper.

The one thing that I will just go ahead and get out of the way here that drives me nuts on ELF's website is that their color swatches are no where near the true color that you get. For example, Plum is shown to be a light purply-pink on the website whereas in person, it's a very dark, deep, well, plum color. Copper is also not near as opaque as they make it seem. It's basically a clear liquid eyeliner with gold glitter. Anyways. Onto the review!




Coffee is a dark brown mostly opaque, matte eyeliner. Plum is, like mentioned, a dark, mostly opaque purple. Copper is a clear liner with lots of gold glitter. Black is, well, black.

Black is probably my favorite of the 4 because it is the color that performs the best.

All of these liners are extremely watery, and it's very easy to just accidentally glob it onto the lids. When that does happen, it's hard to even it out because in some spots, it tends to go a bit sheer whereas in other place they tend to be really dark. It can be really messy to work with. You absolutely cannot look up after applying this product because it will get all over your upper eyelid. It takes a while to dry. That being said, once it is dry, it's very hard to get off, which I guess is a good thing when you think about it.

Performance wise, these do pretty alright with an eyelid primer. However, without one, by the end of the day, I find that they can be a little flaky if worn alone or on top of eyeshadow. To prevent this, use a primer or set it with eyeshadow. Once they're applied, they do fine. It's the application process that can be a little bit of a nightmare.

The applicator itself is a thin, synthetic hair brush. In order to prevent a big mess using these, I suggest wiping excess off on the side of the container like you would a nail polish before application.

Copper is the only one that is not really messy. It actually has a bit of a thicker formula which is nice in comparison to the other 3. I use Copper frequently when I want to add a bit of fun to my eye look, especially around the holidays.

So, what say I about these little babies overall? They are okay. They are not great, but they are not terrible. I have actually stopped using them as of lately because I just am way too impatient to work with applying them. If you have a lot of patience, you can probably get some good use out of these. There are much better drugstore liquid eyeliners out there, but you just can't beat the prices for these! If you are tight on money, but you want a decent performing liquid eyeliners, I say go for it. Just be patient with them! You may have to build them up a little after initial application.

Price: $1.00 (US)
Where to buy: Target, some Walmarts, some drugstores, some grocery stores, eyeslipsface.com
Rating: 7/10