Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup
A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict
Heya, ladies! Just another quickie video, this one on filling in eyebrows. I’m going to try and do a new video every few days. I think in this one I start off by saying “Having well defrined eyebrows…” Defrined… I invented a new word, LOL!
Do you have you any plans tonight? Right now I’m foolin’ around with some Eco Tools cruelty free brushes. My GAWD the brush heads are soft!
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I got all lusty lady today when I opened the Smashbox Rapture Travel Brush Collection ($49), with the world in slow motion, the air searing hot, and the beating of my heart pounding in my ears.
Gingerly, I unbowed the ribbon on the pink quilted purse (sooo Chanel-esque, LOVE!), teasing the soft fabric with my fingers…
Smashbox’s Travel Brush Kit is one of several gift sets now available as part of the Smashbox Rapture Holiday Collection and comes with five short-handled travel brushes for face and eyes.
I don’t always like holiday brush sets because I think a lot of them come with brushes of poorer construction (scratchy and/or flimsy) than usual for a line. Most of the time, their allure has to do with the fact that, bundled with gift sets, they’re a heck of a lot cheaper than $20-30 brushes from the big guns like MAC.
But the Rapture Travel Brush set is better than most. I wouldn’t use these brushes every day for months (they’re not quite as soft as my full-size Sonia Kashuk and MAC brushes), but they’re definitely a step up from the MAC travel brush sets I’ve used in the past. Throw in the gorgeous pink carrying case, and you’re looking at a pretty good deal.
This medium-sized brush head is flexible enough to be used as a face or a blush brush, but out of the five brushes in the set, this one feels the coarsest to me.
With heads on both ends, it’s like you’re getting a sixth brush in the set. One end is for liner, and it’s amazing! It feels incredibly soft on my lash line and creates very smooth, silky lines. The other end — the angled contour brush — has stumped me. I haven’t figured out how to use it yet, LOL! Any suggestions?
This brush easily blends away harsh lines and feels cozy and soft against my skin.
Fluffier than most shadow brushes I’ve used before, this brush can also apply color to the crease and the outer V. It applies dry shadow flawlessly, but I’m won’t use it with creams and wet products. When I did it applied kinda blotchy.
This brush’s blunt shape makes smudging eyeliner a breeze, but I wish the bristles were softer (boo).
Price: $49
Use: A sexy carrying case and five above average brushes make this a nice gift
Makeup and Beauty Blog Rating: B
The lightweight brushes fit well in their pink quilted bag, yet aren’t so snug that they’re apt to get squished or deformed while they’re in storage.
As good as they are, these brushes don’t include equivalents to the MAC 266 or 217, and those go with me everywhere, so I’d want to bring along a couple extra brushes to supplement the set.
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Happy Friday! Guess what? Last night I found my new favorite way to clean my makeup brushes.
Normally, I use MAC Brush Cleanser ($11) because it works fast, thoroughly removing all the gunk from the brush head and rinsing out quickly. But last night my bottle ran out when I was halfway through cleaning my brushes. I really wanted to finish before 30 Rock came on the telly (lovin’ ya, Tina Fey!), so I reached into the tub and randomly grabbed a bottle of Aussie Opposites Attract Protect + Soften Shampoo ($3) to complete the job.
Oh, Tina Fey, I’m totally not worthy.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. Although I love this stuff for my hair, I’ve used shampoos like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo to clean brushes in the past but never liked the results. Even after a thorough brush cleaning, they would leave bits of foundation or concealer. Plus, the suds took forever to rinse out.
But Aussie Opposites Attract Shampoo worked great! Caked on concealer, dried gel liner, crusty cream shadow (eww) — it removed even the most stubborn makeup, breaking up the product within seconds. And the suds rinsed out quickly, too.
To clean brushes with Aussie Opposites Attract Shampoo, I squeeze a pea sized amount in a cupped palm, add some warm water and swirl the brush head around in the shampoo-and-water mix. If the brush head has a lot of caked makeup on it then I’ll gently work the shampoo directly into the fibers with my fingers. I then rinse out the brush head in running water to remove the makeup and suds. Tada! Less than a minute later, I’ve got a clean brush.
The best part? It costs a WHOPPING THREE BUCKS for a big 13.5-oz bottle, woo hoo! It’s my new favorite fast and cheap way to give brushes a heavy duty cleaning. 🙂
How do you clean your makeup brushes? Do you have a favorite product or a special technique?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Bargain brush goddess Sonia Kashuk’s gone and done it again. Her Synthetic Flat Top Blusher Brush won me over a few weeks ago, and now I can’t live without several of the brushes from her Kashuk Tools line. I’ve been reaching for the Powder Brush ($19.99), Large Eye Shadow Brush ($12.99) and Angeled Eye Shadow Brush ($9.99) so often that I might as well have all three surgically attached to my hand.
Here’s why I love ’em, and why you might, too. 🙂
Use: To apply loose or pressed powder to the entire face
Price: $19.99
Makeup and Beauty Blog Rating: A
Confession time! I keep this brush on my work desk and periodically rub it all over my face for no reason other than to feel its softness against my skin. It sends me into a state of minor ecstasy. I’ll make ooh, ahh sounds, like when I’m eating dulce de leche ice cream. In general, I try to do this when nobody’s looking, but the other day El Hub caught me and said the act looked “kinda pervy.”
But Sonia’s powder brush has even more going for it than its amazing softness. It applies powder evenly on my skin, powder that doesn’t look caked-on, and leaves a lovely, natural finish I just adore.
If you’re tempted to save a few dollars by purchasing the $11.99 white-handled Powder Brush 01 from Sonia’s other Brush Collection line, resist the urge. I’ve used the white-handled brush, too, and it’s not nearly as soft.
Use: To apply eyeshadow to the entire eyelid area
Price: $12.99
Makeup and Beauty Blog Rating: A+
Sonia’s Large Eye Shadow Brush multi-tasks like a mo-fo. The Kashuk brush brigade designed the thick, soft brush (with a slightly rounded edge) to apply eyeshadow over the entire lid — much like the MAC 252 Large Eye Shader Brush ($29). While I absolutely love the MAC 252 for fast, single washes of color over the entire eye, it doesn’t multi-task quite like Sonia’s Large Eye Shadow Brush does.
Not only do I use Sonia’s Large Eye Shadow Brush for color washes but also to apply color to specific parts of the eye, which I can’t really do with the 252. The rounded shape of Sonia’s brush fits nicely into nooks and crannies — ideal for the crease, under the brow bone or in the outer V.
In a pinch, it even works as a blending brush, too.
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Try as I might, I can’t avoid the siren call of The Container Store. Sure, it irks me that a store can survive on the premise of selling you new crap to store all your present crap, but desperate times call for desperate measures!
I reached critical mass last weekend. My lipstick disorganization finally crossed the line. For the past few months, tubes just kept disappearing and reappearing in the strangest places (How does a tube of lipstick find its way into a kitchen soap dish?).
Luckily, my sanity was only $1.79 away. The Container Store sells these clear accessory boxes designed for belts and jewelry, but they’re also the perfect height to store tubes of lipstick.
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BOW DOWN before the mighty Sonia Kashuk Synthetic Flat Top Blusher Brush. Marvel at its multi-tasking prowess and how it applies blushes and foundations with ease. And don’t be surprised if you find yourself trembling — with glee! — at the cash register. Not only is this brush amazing, but it’s also cheap — $14.99. Holla!
Billed as a cream blush brush, its synthetic fiber head feels like velvet against my skin. Earlier this week when I used it with Sonia’s Creme Blush, it left just the right amount of color on my cheeks without any streaking. Blending with it was also a snap. It removed harsh lines with ease.
The brush is flat on the top of the head, which is not a totally revolutionary design, but it is one I’d never used before.
I couldn’t help but wonder what else I could use this brush with, so I experimented with it this afternoon. I think it also works great with…
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Makeup brushes are like the various stray animals that show up at my door. They arrive looking for shelter, and I can’t resist giving them a new home. 🙂 Above are a few recently adopted brushes from Target’s Sonia Kashuk line, brushes known for delivering a lot of bang for your buck.
From top to bottom:
Brushes are like potato chips; I can never have just one. Today I “researched” (i.e. surfed the internet) highly rated brushes and ended up at Makeup Alley. Here are some of the highest rated brushes I found:
MAC
Side note: I love MAC brushes!
Bare Escentuals
Sonia Kashuk
Prescriptives
Bobbi Brown
The Body Shop
Stila
Sephora
Nars
Even though my brush stash has grown a little out of control, I never regret adding new brushes to it because of how often I use them.
I can’t believe it’s already Sunday night, ya’ll. Drat! It’s back to work for me tomorrow.
This morning I woke up, watched a few episodes of Samatha Brown’s Passport to Europe on the Travel Channel (let’s go to Monaco!), and then went for a run around the neighborhood. I’ve sort of skipped out on my chores today (boo to me, I know), but I needed to just chill out for a spell. Now I may watch a movie on TV.
How was your weekend? What was the most surprising thing that happened to you?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. Girlfriend, you know your weekend isn’t over ’til you catch up on your reading! Get ready for the best posts from the ladies of the Beauty Blog Network and Splendicity![Continue reading…]
High Definicils, Lancome’s new release of their legendary glossy black Definicils mascara, features an improved soft rubber brush that makes Definicils much easier to apply.
Shortly after Lancome introduced the original Definicils mascara in 1991, it became the “it” mascara of the 90s. I remember being in college and seeing Definicils ads in beauty mags, but I could never afford it back then. Later, when I finished school and got my first real job after graduation, one of my first little splurges was on a tube of Definicils mascara.
Unfortunately, that was my first, and, um, last tube.
I liked the rich black color, the shine, and how well it thickened and lengthened my lashes, but I could never quite figure out the brush. The Definicils formula is and was surprisingly thick, and the dense brush Lancome included with the product back in the 90s always gave me clumpy lashes.
Flash forward about a decade. The new brush that ships with High Definicils mascara makes a world of difference. Lancome hasn’t changed the famously black Definicils mascara formula, but the old dense, bristly brush has been replaced by what the company calls a “high precison” brush (aka, soft rubber brush with stubby rubber bristles). It makes Definicils worth another try.
After applying a layer with the high precision brush I didn’t see any clumping at all, just an even application of product onto my lashes. Unlike the old school brush, the newer one delivers great lash separation and consistent coverage for long, thick, natural-looking lashes.
High Definicils in action…
Nekkid lashes!
One layer of High Definicils…
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