I always keep aside a small monthly budget for beauty products. I don't drive, I don't smoke, I'm happy to buy my clothes from Primark and due to family circumstances I rarely get to socialise outside my house. My only real indulgence is make-up and beauty products - they make me happy!

e.l.f is an established American brand that was launched in Britain at the end of 2007. The bulk of their products are either £1.50 or £3.50. They say they are able to offer quality products at economy prices by advertising on the internet, sourcing the best ingredients at the most competitive prices, and using basic packaging.

Usually I'm happy to save up and buy a name brand. I like my little luxuries. What convinced me to try e.l.f. was a review by a beauty vlogger on Youtube raving about e.l.f.s warm bronzer. She was so enthusiastic I clicked on the website link out of curiosity....

Three days later my postman brought me a bulging padded envelope stuffed with e.l.f. goodies! I won't go into detail about the website and my entire order as I would like to review everything separately if I can, but I received 15 products at a total order value of £30.50(with free delivery).

The first items I am going to review are the two featherproof moisturising lip liners I ordered in 'Natural Blush' and 'Bark'.

I have decided to be brutal and compare their 'performance' to the little I have left of my trusty MAC Rosewood Cremestick lip liner.

First things first though. The website description says 'Velvety ProVitamin Complex colour caresses lips with naturally long-lasting, never feathering, hydrating pigments.'
There are five shades - Bitter, Spice, Mauve Luxe, Bark and Natural Blush. As you run the cursor over each shade the pencil changes to that colour.

Each liner is about four and a half inches long, and coloured white with it's own shade covering the end. It has it's name and shade printed on the side in silver lettering. They come in simple packaging, clear plastic moulded covering glued to a piece of pink card. The back of the card says 'Soft Touch Hydro-Extend technology extends wear and hydrates lips. Pro-vitamin complex gently locks in rich, natural colour.'

There is a nice pencil sharpener included with each liner, also in white with 'e.l.f' printed in silver on the side. The liners have clear plastic caps on them which is a good idea - you do get some that don't have tops and you end up with grubby pencils and a scribbled in make-up bag.

Why order two? I was aware that the website colours may not be truly representative of the actual product. There were two shades that looked like they might match my lip colour, and at £1.50 each I reasoned that I could afford both and if one was wrong for me it wouldn't be an expensive mistake.

Colour likeness to screen shades is reasonable. They both look a shade or two lighter on the website, but the colours are basically right. The Natural Blush was a little too pink for me, but Bark turned out to be a fairly close colour dupe to MAC Rosewood.

Results of my experiments - e.l.f Bark v MAC Rosewood.

I wanted a colour that was as close as possible to my own lip colour. Visible lip liner is very early 90s! The MAC was more accurate but then I chose that instore, not from a computer screen.

First I swatched them both on the back of my hand to look at their pigmentation. The e.l.f liner needed a couple of extra strokes to become as vivid as the MAC, then they looked similar. I left the swatches on my hand for about an hour and didn't notice any fading. When I rubbed them off the e.l.f disappeared first.

Then I applied them on my lips, e.l.f on one side, MAC on the other. I couldn't really tell the difference when they were on, except the slightly different colours. Again, the MAC was a little more durable but not majorly.

The liner formulations were very similar You don't need to warm the e.l.f pencil up, it is already very soft. Once I was careless about putting the cap back on and it smudged all over the inside.

I couldn't test for feathering, as being a non-smoker I don't have any yet but both liners stayed put through lunch and coffee, outlasting my lipstick.

My main conclusion ended up being that it's perhaps a bit mean to compare a top end product with an economy one, even if the cheap product prides itself on its quality.

I wouldn't say that for that price you can't go wrong, but ultimately the e.l.f liners are well worth trying out partly because of the fantastic price. They don't quite match up to MAC unsurprisingly, but they perform well and 'Bark' will be an acceptable replacement after 'Rosewood' has nothing left to give.