Elf Mineral Infused Primer

One of the things I was most excited to try was the Elf Mineral Infused Primer, or as it's now listed on the site Elf Studio Mineral Face Primer. Why the name change? I haven't a clue. In any case, super overjoyed to get this product, it was probably the Elf package I was most excited to receive, and that's saying something since I'm always excited to receive any package and an Elf package in particular. After receiving and using for about a week, I have to say that I was more than a little disappointed with it. More after the jump.

Beyond the pretty packaging there is not one good thing that I can say about this primer, absolutely nothing. First off the smell is simply horrid, it smells as if I dipped my hand in petrol and smeared it across my face. Then it went on so greasy that it made my powder application go on in patches, and over a few days I started to get some new little pimples, didn't I just go through this with the Mist and Set spray? Onward.

The bottle came with a pump that was temperamental, when I first started using it, it would give way too much of the primer and I would have to  wipe some off the back of my hand where I usually put my primer before applying to my face, using too much of it would be a disaster since this primer does not absorb very well and feels as if it's just sitting on top of the skin. Also, since this pump has no gentle gradual depressing action, you wind up with a lot of product all the time, I would usually have to reduce the amount that came out of the pump by over half. Then the pump started to malfunction about three days in, I would depress it and would have splatter all over the place, from my face to the front of my shirt, and then it just stopped giving me any product at all, I opened the bottle to look inside and see a lot of product coated to the side with no way to get to it other than to dig it out, and the straw attached to the bottom of the pump was too short to reach what was at the bottom of the bottle.

What comes out of the bottle with one pump.

What I usually reduce it to, otherwise it's unusable.

















In reading the ingredients I found of the eight ingredients, one was Dimethicone Crosspolymer which is a combination of two Dimethicones which are waxes, another was Cyclomethicone which is another wax. Another ingredient Penoxyethanol is restricted for use in cosmetics in Japan and a number of other international markets because of toxicity concerns. Another ingredient, Methylparaben is in the family group of Parabens that mimic Estrogen and can cause an over production of hormones that interfere with the endocrine system. Silica was the only ingredient which made any sense in this product, as it's the main ingredient necessary for obtaining that smooth matte surface that a good primer gives because it creates a thin layer between your skin and the products that you apply. Oils and waxes clog your pores and stress you skin, when your pores are clogged, your skin produces more oil, more oil traps bacteria in the pores and surface of the skin, bacteria on in your pores and on your skin leads to?? See where I'm going with this?

  As I said it goes on really greasy and does not make for a matte application, not sure if you can tell from the picture but that shiny patch is the primer rubbed in as much as I could get it to.

I was less than impressed, the point of my primer should not be to make my already combination oily skin even more so, and if I wanted dark spots from getting pimples, I'd simply spend two days without washing my face, I don't need to pay money to achieve the same effect. My final take, yes it's only $6, but if you have sensitive or combination/oily skin or both, or suffer from hyper-pigmentation, I'd say stay away as you'll probably spend more money on repairing the damage that this primer will undoubtedly do.

No music today :(