Maybelline’s Color Elixir Lip Color Is as Good as High End Brands

I tend to ignore a lot of Maybelline’s lip products for some reason, but I kept seeing this one and I was intrigued by the range of purple shades. Of the 20 shades available, five of them are purplish and vary quite a bit in wearability.

Being the makeup fiend I am, I went for probably the most conventionally unwearable purple shade in the bunch, Vision in Violet. I’ve heard good things about other shades, so I’m guessing that what I say here extends across the whole line of products, but I can only review Vision in Violet.

Unless you have a coupon or there’s a sale, you’re going to end up paying about $8.99 for each one of these, which I feel is a little expensive for such a small tube of gloss.

That said, I think if you are forced to pay full price for it, you won’t be that disappointed because the product behaves like a high end lip color. It’s opaque, creamy, moisturizing, and doesn’t bleed (at least not on me). It just feels good on your lips.

I got about three or four hours of wear out of it before I needed to reapply. It really clings to your lips, and I think this formula made my lips look plumper, even though it isn’t designed to be a plumping product. It’s thick, but doesn’t feel gooey. It feels more like a thick balm, or like if you put a light layer of Vaseline on your lips.

The packaging is pretty and no-frills. Because the interior of the tube is slanted at the bottom, when you first pick it up, it looks like a regular lipstick, as if you can see the tip of the lipstick through the tube. When you open it, though, there’s an unusual applicator that makes it easy to spread the product and follow the shape of your lip. It’s a plush, spade-shaped angora brush.

If I were to see these on sale, I would probably pick up a few more colors. The purple shade I have is very obviously violet, with blue undertones, but there are purples that veer more toward pink, as well as nudes, reds, pinks, and even an orange.

Photo credit: Ulta