How I Clean My Brushes | Two Simple Ways!

A little while a go I shared with you guys a handful of my favourite face and eye brushes to apply my makeup with. In order to get a good application it is important that your brushes are clean otherwise your makeup wont blend well and you'll be left with lasts weeks product on your face which is especially not good.

Makeup brushes harbour bacteria so you don't want to be putting that on your face otherwise it'll lead to breakouts or even infections. There isn't an amount of time set in stone on when you should clean your brushes, in an ideal world we would after every use but that's just not possible for most. So for this post, I thought i'd share with you a couple of ways I clean mine.

As I said, I for one do not have enough time to wash my brushes on a daily basis. However, if I find my brushes aren't blending my makeup as they usually would and I don't have enough time to wash and wait a long time for them to dry, I will do a spot clean. This consists of my makeup remover and a cotton pad, it's pretty simple.

I'll simply take the Garnier Micellar Water and put a bit on a cotton pad that I've split in half. I'll use one half for cleaning and the other half to dry. I tend to swirl my brush around on the cotton pad until the majority of the makeup has come off, next I'll take the dry cotton pad and do the same to dry the brush. I'll do this the night before or an hour or so before so that they can dry properly.

Now for the deep clean. I've heard lots of people say that they hate cleaning their brushes but personally I don't mind, I actually quite enjoy it. I used to just take a little baby shampoo on my palm and dampen the brush under the tap and swirl until the water runs clear. 

However, when reading a blog I saw that they were using a silicone oven mitt, I know it seems a little odd at first. They said they got the idea as they're a similar, cheaper alternative to the Sigma Brush Cleaner. The bristles get in between the little ridges on the mitt that actually clean them really well, I was so impressed at how clean my brushes looked and how soft they felt once I had tried it.

I will do the same process as I mentioned earlier, just with the mitt. First I will take some baby shampoo on the mitt, I will then dampen the brush under the tap and swirl on the glove til the water runs clear. To rid the brush of shampoo I will rinse it under the luke warm tap then either pop it bristles facing downwards in a brush stand or lay them to dry on a towel over night. Though, its better to stand the brushes with bristles facing downwards as the water will run away and prevent the glue from dissolving.

For sponges, its a little different. I must admit my sponge is on its way out, its starting to crack a bit and is really stained. I tend to do the same process for brushes but instead I use this Body Shop Tea Tree Cleanser as Tea Tree kills bacteria, therefore I know although my sponge is stained, I am hopefully killing the bacteria. I will the leave it to dry on the towel with the rest of my brushes.

And there you have it, a couple of simple ways to cleanse your brushes. Nothing too hard, time consuming or expensive! I'd love to know whether you have any techniques or tricks on how you clean yours, let me know!

HOW DO YOU CLEAN YOUR BRUSHES?

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Most Used Eye Brushes | Real Techniques, ELF and eBay sets!

As promised I said i'd follow up my previous post on my most used face brushes, but before I go into that I thought i'd let you know that I've done a guest post over on Erin's blog, here. Erin has recently just started blogging again and decided to add a new feature to a blog where every now and then people she know's from online or through blogging write something, whatever they'd like. I wrote 5 Things Things That Make Me Happy, so please go check that out and the rest of Erin's blog!

Anyway, here I am again talking about my most used eye brushes, although I have a lot more eye brushes than face brushes there are a select few I reach for every time I do my eye makeup. 

1. Lydia Professional Pink Flat Brush.

As you can see this is a small flat brush and I use this to pack on the base of my eye shadow. This holds the eye shadow well and i'm able to apply it with no fall out, however that could just be down to the eye shadow i'm using- who knows! I picked this brush up in a set from Amazon, here and they're so pretty- I've not had any problems with them so far, plus they come with a pink case that is very handy for travelling!

2. Large Pencil Brush.

Again, this was part of a set of 4 from eBay, here. I cant fault the brushes that came in this set, despite them being a little bigger than I thought they're such great quality and the bristles are so soft. It's perfect for applying eye shadow in the crease as it fits in nicely and if you keep working at the eye shadow it blends in nicely.

3. ELF Blending Brush.

I had heard good things about the ELF brushes and I really needed a blending brush so I picked up this to try. At first I was a bit disappointed with the quality, the bristles fell out easily and especially when washed. I stopped using it for a while and decided to try it again and I've not had that problem, perhaps there were a few odd bristles that just wasn't glued in properly? It's holding up well now and blends my eye shadow well, it's also really soft so it's perfect for blending! If this one isn't clean, i'll use one of the blending brushes from the eBay set I mentioned previously- although it's a bit big, it does the job!

4. Real Techniques Detailer Brush.

I've just realised that the majority of these brushes are from a set, however most of the sets are so affordable from eBay or Amazon. This brush is from the Real Techniques Core Collection and I use it for applying eye shadow to the lower lash line as it's so small and fits perfectly under the lashes!

5. Spooley Brush.

This isn't really a brush, well it sort of is as it has tiny bristles. This again was part of a set from eBay, here. The quality of this brush isn't that great but the rest of the brushes are so I can't fault them, plus I use this every day so it's had quite a lot of use, therefore it was worth it! I comb through my eyebrows with this before and after applying my brow pencil, it tidies them up when I've just rolled out of bed and after applying brow product to ensure it's spread evenly. 

And there you have it,  a quick run through of my favourite eye brushes. Each of these brushes/sets are great however if you're on a tighter budget then i'm sure you can find similar with all of these types of brushes in.


What are your favourite makeup brushes?
Please let me know in the comments!

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Most Used Face Brushes | Real Techniques and Bare Minerals Dupe!

I tend to talk a lot about makeup here on my blog but I never seem to talk about how I apply the products mentioned. Today I thought i'd run through my most used face brushes, there will also be a post to follow on my most used eye brushes- watch this space.

First of all i'll start with my base. Now I've never really got on with those flat foundation brushes as I felt like I was painting on my makeup and they left streaks, certainly not the look I go for on an everyday basis or ever. Instead I like to use a buffing brush, I started off with the Real Techniques Buffing Brush which I loved for about a year until unfortunately the bristles weren't as soft or the best for applying foundation. When reading Makeup Savvy, I discovered there was a dupe(here) for the Bare Minerals Perfecting Face Brush, you know that buffing brush with the dent in the centre to disperse foundation? Yeah, that one and I couldn't not purchase the dupe and give it a whirl, in a few words- I love it and it was less than £2, steal!

I also love using the Real Techniques Miracle Complexion Sponge (This wasn't the most 'photogenic' so see the first picture) on a day-to-day basis as it's so quick to blend out foundation to give a natural finish to the skin. I recommend running this under the tap and squeezing it out so that the sponge doesn't absorb and waste your foundation.

Base complete, I'll go onto the brushes I use to finish my face. Another Real Techniques brush(I promise, this isn't sponsored), I use the Duo-Fibre Contour Brush for as the name suggests- contouring. I'm a newbie to contouring so I needed something to apply the product lightly so that I could progressively build it up. This brush is perfect for just that and is flat and tapered to fit perfectly into the hollows of your cheeks.

Left- Duo-Fibre Contour Brush, used to contour
Right- Contour Brush used to apply blush

Another Real Techniques Contour Brush that I don't use for contouring but blush instead. I find this is the perfect size to apply blush to the apples of my cheeks and the bristles are super soft so they pick up product well. However, sometimes I over-do it on the blush so I advise you use this with a light hand to avoid looking like Coco the Clown.

And last but certainly not least is the Real Techniques Duo-Fibre Face Brush which I've recently started to use for all over powder. I've never really needed to powder before, primers seemed to keep my makeup in place as I wasn't overly oily, though that has recently changed. I'm not sure whether it's to do with the weather and becoming a hot mess during the summer months- who knows. But what I do know this brush has been great for applying powder lightly throughout the day to combat the shine and without making my face look cakey. 

That's a wrap on my most-used face brushes, I know there's a lot of Real Techniques brushes but they just seem to work for me and they're not overly expensive which my purse is thankful for.

Have you got any makeup brush recommendations? 

Please leave them below, I'd love to know!

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I Can't Be The Only One? | Bad Beauty Habits

Hello! For those of you who aren't already aware I've changed my blog name, I was 'A Touch of Pastels' but now everything has been changed over. Yay!

However, today I thought I'd do something a bit different- talk through some bad beauty habits. The first is a given with the image below, makeup filled brushes!

- I don't clean my brushes as often as I should. Once a week I say, more like evey fortnight- probably a bit gross!

- My skin seems to eat my makeup, why? I forget to prime and set with powder or a setting spray. This is probably why I look a bit worse for wear when returning from college or shopping.

- I touch my face, by that I mean I check for spots that could've appeared through out the day and probably encourage more. Not to mention the urge to pop them, disgusting I know! Does this sound familiar?

- I'm too lazy to dry my hair after washing so I let it dry naturally, that's not the problem. When my hair is wild in the morning and I need to look semi presentable I straighten/put some curls in my hair but I don't use heat protection because it doesn't feel right on dry hair, and I wonder why my hair is so damaged!?

- Who has time to moisturise their body after every shower? Definitely not me! I don't want to wait around in the cold for my body to absorb the body butter so I don't get stuck to my clothes. I should really pick up the Vaseline spray on body moisturiser!

- Old makeup? Throw it out! I'm guilty of assuming a 2 possibly 3 year old cream eye shadow would be OK, it wasn't! Talk about extremely irritated and dry eye lids! Having said that, give or take a few months and it can't cause that much harm, if anything. What do you think about it?

- Steer away from the tweezers, or in my case scissors. When I was about 15, I thought my eyebrow hairs were too long and thought it'd be perfectly fine to trim them with scissors. I thought it was OK until I wiped the pencil off I used to fill them in, I was half an eyebrow down! Thank goodness it grew back but in some cases, it doesn't. So don't over pluck either!

- I'm sure most people have bitten their nails at some point in their life, whether that be down to habit or habit when you're nervous. Think of all the germs and bacteria on your hands and even worse hidden under your nail, this stopped me along with painting them with my favourite nail varnish!

- That little bit of skin at the side of your nail, do not pick it! Apart from the fact it hurts like a (excuse my language) b*tch, it can also get infected really easily- ouch!

- Who else picks at split ends? I found myself rummaging through my hair while watching TV to find split ends, while I thought I was removing them I was actually told I was causing further damage up the hair. Again, I wonder why my hair is so damaged!

Please let me know I'm not the only one? What are your bad beauty habits? I'd love to hear in the comments!

Also let me know what you'd like to see here on The Traces of my Thoughts.

Much Love,

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