massive e.l.f. review! part 1

Hi guys! I have an exciting post for you today!

Have you heard of eyes lips face, better known as e.l.f. cosmetics? I'm sure many of you have because they are a great company offering cosmetics for amazing prices.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to choose some products to review for you guys, and because all their items are so inexpensive, I was able to get a lot of fun stuff to show you!
In fact, I got so many things, I'm going to be posting this review in three parts!

Look at my big box of goodies!

Today I'm going to talk about my order and show you the things I got besides polish.
And then tomorrow and the next day will be polish posts!

Let's get started!

The ordering process was easy - you can use paypal!
They always have promotions so you can get some free things or free shipping! I had free shipping on my order (to Canada!) If you subscribe to their email newsletter, you'll always get emails about free gifts or free shipping or sales.

My order came in a big box, and inside box was this:

Everything was thrown into a bag and the bag was secured in the box with lots of packing paper.
When shipping nail polish you should be more cautious than this but for most of their makeup items, this would be perfectly fine.
Nothing broke in my order, but one bottle does have a fracture.
So this isn't the best way to package polish but for anything else it is fine.

Just look at all that polish! I love how the bottles line up so nicely.
Keep your eye out tomorrow and Thursday to see swatches of all these babies!

Here is my review of the other things I got.

I knew I wanted to try one of their makeup brushes.
Now, if you know me, you know I didn't want this for makeup! I'm using it for cleanup on my cuticles!
This is the Small Angled Brush from the Studio line.
The brush costs $3.00.

The quality of the brush is great! The bristles are stiff enough to be able to remove polish from my cuticles, but still soft enough that I'm sure it would work great for makeup too!
The metal on the tip protects the brush from acetone so I imagine it will last quite some time. My last cleanup brush lasted me almost a year before the bristles fell out. We'll see if this one does as good!
I really like this brush and I would buy it again.

This is the Nourishing Cuticle Pen. This retails for $1.

This is one of the few things in my order that I don't really like.
The tip of the pen is very hard and this makes it difficult to get the oil onto your cuticles. You have to press too hard to get the oil onto your cuticles, and that can damage your cuticles.
Now, you can easily get the product onto your nails, which can help if you have very dry nails. But it is not great for cuticles.

These are the Nail Polish Remover Pads and they work really well!
These are also just $1! See what I mean about great prices?

I took off a pretty thick mani with these pads to test their removing ability!
I was wearing base coat, 2 coats of China Glaze Gamer Glam,  2 coats of OPI DS Original, and a thick coat of Seche Vite. 4 nails had black Konad stamping on them as well, and a second coat of SV.
It took me 2 pads to remove the whole thing, and as you can see, the second pad wasn't fully used. If I was wearing less coats, I could probably have used 1 pad for all 10 fingers.
They worked so much better than I expected. It was easy to get all the polish off. It penetrated all the layers so fast! Color me impressed.

These have a light citrus scent, and my only complaint is that they leave a bit of a residue on your fingers after using them - but a quick handwashing fixes that.

I decided to be crazy and try some false eyelashes! This the Natural Lash Kit, it comes with the lashes and some lash glue.
Now, I haven't used this yet - I plan on wearing them for Halloween! I'll let you know how that goes. I've never applied false lashes before!
I have read online that these lashes rock!
I also read that they are not very "natural" and are quite dramatic, and that they are a bit too wide and often need to be trimmed to fit the eye. However, I have really big eyes and these seem to be a perfect fit!
I'm actually super excited to try these. I love big lashes!

After placing your order, you are given the option to send referrals to friends, and get a free gift for doing so! Of course I had to refer some people and get a gift.

My gift was a Hypershine Lipgloss!
I'm not a big lipgloss wearer, but I used to be in junior high! (I'm talkin' 3 different lipglosses at once because I thought it was cool.)
I tend to stick to un-tinted balms now because my lips are pretty bright as it is.

The package says to twist 7-10 times so the product will come out but I had to twist it a bunch before the gloss made it out the top. No big deal.

Now I'm no makeup reviewer but I normally see swatches like this so here you go! This is how it looks on my hand.
I'm not an expert but as far as glosses go I think this one is pretty good! Not too sticky. Not gritty between my lips.

There you go! Part one of my e.l.f. review. I hope this was helpful for you ladies!
Keep your eyes peeled for my polish posts, there are some beauties there!
And don't forget to hop over to the e.l.f. site and see what else they have! Right now everything is BOGO 50% off, or free shipping. Their products are like, endless. Check it out!

The products in this post were sent to me for review.