Under suitable regularity assumptions, the p-elastic energy of a planar set E ⊂ R 2 is defined to bewhere k ∂E is the curvature of the boundary ∂E. In this work we use a varifold approach to investigate this energy, that can be well defined on varifolds with curvature. First we show new tools for the study of 1-dimensional curvature varifolds, such as existence and uniform bounds on the density of varifolds with finite elastic energy. Then we characterize a new notion of L 1 -relaxation of this energy by extending the definition of regular sets by an intrinsic varifold perspective, also comparing this relaxation with the classical one of [BeMu04], [BeMu07]. Finally we discuss an application to the inpainting problem, examples and qualitative properties of sets with finite relaxed energy.