I’m writing this in part because this is something that I always forget, but then I remember, but then I forget, and I want to remember it because whenever I do remember it, I’m like, “Dang, girl! You have to keep doing that!”
It’s just this: whenever you’re blending multiple colors on your lids — like more than three — it helps A TON to have a couple of clean paper towels handy that you can use to remove product from your brushes along the way while you blend your eyeshadow.
This is my big issue with blending: sometimes when I blend multiple colors, they start to get muddy, so instead of seeing a gorgeous gradient that transitions from one color to the next, and the next, I end up with a single mixed, muddy shade that’s made up of a combination of all of the colors from my lash line up.
I think that my blending brushes end up with too much product on them. With all the swiping and the tiny little circles, the bristles on my brush get overloaded, so instead of lifting and pushing each eyeshadow along the skin, the bristles end up just depositing more product, instead of moving it around.
Bottom line, everything muddles together.
To prevent this, I’ll gently run my brush back and forth across a clean paper towel a few times, and I’ll do it several times along the way while I do my eye makeup, to clean the brush as much as possible without actually cleansing it.
It’s a little thing, nothing fancy, but it keeps the muddiness away.
Try it sometime! I know it’s super simple, but I think it’ll help. It sure helps me. 🙂
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I do that :). If I have time, I sometimes go a step further and put a little bit of my Bobbi Brown brush spray on a corner of that paper towel. It’s not me cleaning the brush properly like this of course, but it gets cleaner. Then I “dry” the brush with a few taps on the dry part of the paper towel.
I use a copper scourer or stippling sponge; it’s pretty magical. Trying to lessen my garbage output because…Island. 😀
btw, if you want to keep brushes consistently and easily clean while avoiding the dreaded Brush Cleaning Day, keep a tiny spray bottle of Cinema Secrets brush cleaner (hands down *BEST*) at hand with your paper towels. You can go months without shampooing your brushes using this cleaner instead. Fave of the pro MUAs, we buy in 48 oz. bulk bottles!
I bought a cheap color switcher from Amazon. Best $6 I’ve ever spent.
This is a great tip! Sometimes I use a tissue to clean off my brush, but I bet a paper towel works even better because of the texture.
Oh, I need to try that. Muddy colors are not pretty.
In my experience, small microfibre towels work like magic. It’s like they just pull the product off the bristles. They’re cheap too, and you can just throw them in the wash when they get too dirty. Then they’re like new! Other than that, when I need some detail work, I use a very small, pointed blending brush (e.g., the Tom Ford Smokey Eye Brush). That way, I can blend exactly where I want to, without combining all the colors on the entire lid. Other ‘typical’ blending brushes seem to be quite big, and I find I can’t control the blending too well. It gets a bit muddy no matter what I do (unless that’s what I want, when there are just very few colors). 🙂