I think when the bite-sized eye shadow palettes from Elf, the whole beauty community heard how excellent their quality was for the price. The eyeshadow lover in me tinkered on buying them all but actually – there was only one that really stood out to me and that was the Elf Hot Jalapeno Eyeshadow Palette.
I picked the ELF Hot Jalapeno Eyeshadow palette up back in December, I remember nipping into Superdrug after getting some piercings and seeing them in person for the first time and it went into my basket straight away, as even more so in person the colours stood out. I love green shadows and a few years ago went through a complete phase with the monochromatic 9 pan palettes from Colourpop, and this gives me similar vibes on a smaller scale. The green palette that Colourpop released actually wasn’t my favourite tone of green, a more kerry green, whereas I prefer an emerald or an olive. And the colour of Elf’s Hot Jalapeno hits the mark for my skin-tone.
The packaging of these is undeniably simple, but I kind of love it, for £4 each if they had a full spectrum of colours I could see myself binning off a lot of eyeshadows off and picking up a couple of these dinky palettes for travel depending on my mood! I’m not a girl who ever uses the mirrors in palettes, and I’d love for everything to be as small and as compact as these! Whilst cheap I enjoy the clear lid, I can see what’s inside and if I had all palettes only of this style I think there would be a lot more rotation in my collection without having to open them all up to see the shades inside.
Hot Jalapeno features a khaki-olive green matte, a deeper forest green matte, an olive green and gold metallic. Swatched whilst the pigmentation of these shadows was good, I felt a little let down by the metallics as they lacked the sheen I love, but actually, on the eye, they reflect far better on a more curved surface than a flat arm as pictured below. But as you can see, these are all just one swipe swatches and the pigmentation is excellent.
Elf Hot Jalapeno Eyeshadow Swatches
When I wear colourful eyeshadows I tend to go for something quite monochromatic, so whilst I enjoy the gold and it does work well with these colours, this could have been an even tinier three pan palette for me as I really enjoy the three green shades through the crease by itself. Whilst I’ve played around with the gold, the main way I wear this shadow is using that lighter matte green through the crease, the darker green through the outer corners and then focusing the olive green right through from the inner corner to around two-thirds of the way across, focusing on blending into that deeper green shade.
All the shades in the ELF Hot Jalapeno Eyeshadow palette perform well, as with the majority of a pigmented bright tones they require blending to a nice smooth gradient – however even without a transition shade in here, this does work by itself. The shadows aren’t powdery and don’t blend away to anything and don’t need more and more product applying whilst trying to get them smooth, I lay the colour down and blend out and find there’s usually only a small patch that might require a little bit of extra pigment layering down.
Both the metallic and matte formulas apply nicely. But the thing that impresses me most with these shadows is longevity because these still look close to perfect even after 14 hours on the eye and an afternoon spent rollering paint on walls. There was a teeny bit of creasing but only noticed when I really had my head stuck deep into the mirror for inspection, from a distance still looking absolutely great and wouldn’t have any clues that it hadn’t been more freshly applied within hours.
Elf Hot Jalapeno Eyeshadow Eye Looks
I really hope Elf expand on this range in the future – the colour range is nice but does lean quite neutral and soft shades – this is the punchiest out of the lot. I’d love to see some more bright colours added to the range. Hot Jalapeno is worth every penny and more, the application, pigmentation and wear time rival things much more expensive in my collection.
If you are looking to stick to a budget but want to give yourself a little treat – the elf Bite sized palettes are a worthy product to take a look at. Available to buy at £4.00 each from e.l.f UK here. Post contains affiliate links.
If you love eyeshadow as much as me you might enjoy reading my Eyeshadow Palette Tag post next.
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That first look that is more green-toned is stunning on you! I love simple eye looks to be honest, most days I wouldn’t use more than 3 shadows 😛
Beautiful eye look!