I’ve talked about the misery inflicted by my makeup pencil sharpener before, but I’m no longer livin’ that messy life, because I recently figured out how to make it perform better by — novel idea here — cleaning it!
The solution I stumbled on has two parts. First, I ditched my Make Up For Ever, and UD Grindhouse, sharpeners for the no-frills Sephora sharpener shown at the top. It doesn’t have a built-in enclosure to catch the shavings, but that actually forces me to toss the shavings in the trash after every use.
Those enclosures never seem to stay affixed very well anyway, and they burst open no matter how many rubber bands I wrap around them.
Second, and this part is key, I swipe the blades clean after every use. To facilitate this, I keep baby wipes from Costco around and usually end up using one of those, but makeup wipes, a clean Q-Tip, tissue or a cotton pad (either soaked with a little makeup remover, or just dry on its own) work too.
Doing this ensures that there aren’t any errant makeup particles floating around, and consequently no transfer of color between eyeliners and lip pencils.
Seriously, why did this never occur to me before?! Oh, my gosh…
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
These things have occurred to me but also I’m lazy!
Honestly I am too, ha ha! But this is SO each to do since I usually have a wipe sitting around anyway, otherwise I would never even try it!
This particular sharpener is also great by the way; I’ll be doing an Unsung Heroes post on it soon!
Don’t you love it when you discover a new, little life hack?! My sharpener only really sees one pencil, but I still like to keep it clean. And, like yours, the lid fell off ages ago so I always sharpen over the garbage. 🙂
I like my UD grindhouse because it’s very sharp. I always clean my sharpeners with a cotton bud. First in makeup remover then I go over the blade with one soaked in rubbing alcohol.
Oh and I’ve got two. One for eyes and one for lips. Cuz that’s just how particular I am about optical health. (For the record I NEVER line my waterline either.)
Good call to have two separate ones. I’m going to pick up another one of these Sephora sharpeners (six bucks!) next time I pop in.
Just make sure to mark them which is which. Lol. Before I did that I can remember looking for red or black/brown/blue residue to determine which was which.
I figure I could mark one with a smudge of nail polish or dot it with a Sharpie!
P.S. Is it hot down there?!
Girl, I don’t have time for this. I’m often applying liner in the car. Plus, I really love those shavings and like to see them accumulate in the little capture box attached to the sharpener. I’m using one by Clinique and it’s quite tight.
I love the smell of the shavings!
Karen,
You’ve inspired me to get rid of the “housing” on my MAC Universal sharpener. I don’t need that clunky plastic thing getting in the way of a clean, ready-to-go sharpener. The pain-in-the-butt aspect of eyeliner sharpening is not the cleaning of the tool, but the actual sharpening. I get slightly annoying when I’m in the flow of my makeup routine and then *record scratch* I gotta stop and sharpen an eyeliner! grr…. 😀
Great tip Karen!
I’m so lazy about cleaning out my pencil sharpener container – it’s actually gross! It does seem like a better idea to get a simple sharpener and clean after every use – sounds obvious but never occurred to me! 😀