Tools

BeautyBlender vs Bundle Monster Sponge

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The Beautyblender is a holy grail tool for many makeup fanciers and artists, thanks to its versatility, ease of use, and ease of care. That said, at a regular retail price of $20 (but less online), it is no wonder why people are looking into more cost-effective alternatives. Some might spend $20 on a brush and not think anything of it, but a sponge does have a limited lifespan and would need to be replaced far more frequently, even when well-cared-for, than a brush.

Several companies have similar products – there’s a Sephora branded one, a Real Techniques introduced one, and there are several others from various companies, including some, generic ones. Bundle Monster actually has a set of four sponges for around $10-15 online. I’ve seen participants in various communities say that there is no difference when it comes to the Beautyblender vs Bundle Monster sponges and that you should save your money. I also have a friend who exclusively buys the less costly variants, swearing  up and down that they are identical.

I endeavored to do a Beautyblender vs Bundle Monster Sponge comparison for a while. Then, a friend bought the 4pc Bundle Monster pack and decided she wouldn’t need all four, and was sweet enough to give me two on Friday, so I was equipped…for science!

I unboxed my two sponges and immediately noticed that they were a denser foam, former to the touch. The base of the teardrop Bundle Monster sponge (mine is purple), which is what I will be comparing to the Beautyblender, was wider and slightly flatter so that it sits up on its own if you set it down that way. It is also ever-so-slightly larger, as you can see here:

BeautyBlender vs Bundle Monster Spongebeautyblender vs bundle monster sponges

Please pardon my slightly less-than-pristine Beautyblender, as she is well-loved. I then wet them simultaneously. It did take a little bit more effort to dampen the sponge, and required more squeezing. When I squeezed it after its initial saturation, some suds oozed out – err, what? I continued to saturate and ring it out until that stopped, about five times. At its largest, it is also larger than the original Beautyblender. This is not always a good thing, though, as it can be more difficult to blend in narrower areas like around your nose, eyes, etc. Here they are dampened (enlarged) and wrung out – I realized after the fact that I am a damn fool and should have included something for scale so you could get an idea of size before and after, but gimme a break. (If you’d like to see the wet vs dry Beautyblender vs Bundle Monster Sponge comparison I’m happy to oblige – just let me know in the comments!)

BeautyBlender vs Bundle Monster Sponge

BeautyBlender vs Bundle Monster Sponge

I was considering doing a Beautyblender vs Bundle Monster Sponge side by side application comparison, but decided against it for now – let me know in the comments if that is relevant to your interests. Instead, I slapped on my foundation with the Bundle Monster Sponge. As I always do when using a sponge like this, I pumped one pump of foundation to the back of my hand, picked up some of the product with the sponge, and began to stipple it onto my face. Two things I noticed immediately: 1) it feels very rubbery and bouncy on your face – it actually bounces and 2) it absorbed more product than the Beautyblender, and did not allow me to deposit all of the absorbed foundation onto my face.

With the Beautyblender, I use about 1.5 pumps of my foundation (which is currently MUFE HD Invisible Cover). The Bundle Monster Sponge had me use about 2.25 pumps to achieve similar coverage. I definitely did not expect this, since the BM sponge is a denser foam – if anything, I’d have thought it would absorb less. After a couple minutes, I was able to blend out my foundation to my desired coverage (medium-ish, I wasn’t doing anything special except guinea pigging). It did the job, but it took a little longer.

It is also important to note how they wash and how easy they are to care for. The BM sponge took more elbow grease to thoroughly clean both with baby shampoo and a Blendercleanser Solid, but did eventually come completely clean without staining. It took slightly longer to fully dry, but that can also be attributed to the density of the sponge.

In all, the Bundle Monster Sponges are an acceptable alternative to Beautyblenders, but it is important they are not identical in form or performance. It takes longer to achieve the same result with the Bundle Monster Sponges, they do not clean quite as quickly. At this point, it is difficult to tell how long they will last, longevity-wise –  but even if they last only 1/4 as long each, the savings are still there at only $10-15 for a pack of four. That said, it is also possible to find Beautyblenders for less than regular retail (Amazon.com, etc).

Disclosure: Neither Beautyblender or Bundle Monster know who I am, as far as I know. I just tried this on my own and wanted to share – I recommend both products, but only you can know your needs. That said, some of the links here are affiliate links – this means I may get a very small percentage of the sale if you decide to buy something. I’ll only tell you that something is awesome if I have verified it myself!

Worth it? GlamGlow ThirstyMud

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GlamGlow was conceived by a couple in Hollywood who were looking to help out some friends’ skin concerns. What started as a favor, friend-to-friend, ultimately developed into a wildly successful and popular skincare brand. Only available for retail for three years, they have received scads of awards for being awesome and are used personally, in salons/spas, and by the professionals the product was originally intended for.

GlamGlow ThirstyMud

GlamGlow ThirstyMud treatment

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I do not believe in miracle products. The purveyors of the YouthMud Tinglexfoliate and the SuperMud Clearing treatments released GlamGlow ThirstyMud around (I think) holiday season 2013.

Resources I generally trust thought highly of the brand, so when some of these people came forth raving about the GlamGlow ThirstyMud mask, I was intrigued. Though the mask can be applied and removed, the consensus was the same: slap it on before bed. Go to sleep. Wake up and be stunned by how awesome your skin looks (and feels!). Women reported that their husbands and boyfriends (who, per them, do not usually notice) were also noticing and commenting on the difference.

Kicker? The $69 price tag for 1.7 ounces of product. OUCH. I like masks, but that’s over $40 per ounce. Does it have gold in it? I promptly forgot about the product because it is simply too much to ask (for my needs and skin).

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How to Dry Makeup Brushes

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After you have thoroughly washed and rinsed your makeup brushes, it is important to see that they dry thoroughly to preserve the structural integrity of the brush and to prevent stuff like mildew.

Once you have rinsed your brushes, you should gently squeeze the bristles over the sink to remove excess water. At this point, you can lay them down horizontally on a towel in a well-ventilated area and leave them to dry, rotating them every few hours so that the side touching the towel can face up.

Alternatively, you can purchase a brush holder like this one or this one (larger) from Benjabelle. The base of the stand is in the center supports a platform that suspends the brushes upside down in silicone grips. Sigma also has a product for this purpose called a Dry’n Shape, which is a case that opens and folds into a cylinder with holders for brushes that dries and shapes them.

Or, you could be like me and forego the fancy equipment for now. Below, I have a few brushes in brush guards (which are also nice if you need to toss brushes into a bag that doesn’t have slots for them to keep them safe). They are suspended from a towel rack with a simple hair elastic (a regular rubber band is fine, too!) – something most of us have lying around the house.

How to Dry Makeup BrushesHow to Dry Makeup Brushes

To do this, take your elastic and hold it between the towel rack and the wall. Pull the top and bottom forward in front of the rack and slide your brushes in. This will secure your brushes there and we can (to quote Ronco) set it and forget it. I frequently tackle this whole thing at night, and by the time I wake up the next morning, my brushes are dry. If you don’t let them dry while you’re sleeping, though, remove the brush guard about 2-3 hours into drying – this will expedite the remaining time. Once all is done, enjoy your now-pristine brushes that may now feel like you’re rubbing a kitten on your face.

Disclosure: None of this stuff sponsored. That said, some of the links in this post are affiliate links – this means I may get a very small percentage of the sale if you decide to buy something. I’ll only tell you that something is awesome if I have verified it myself!

How to Wash Makeup Brushes

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Anyone whose work or hobbies require heavy use of various tools can explain to you the importance of keeping your tools clean and well-maintained. That might be your father, husband, brother – or even you if you’re like me and are kicking ass and taking names in a male-dominated industry. Your brushes and sponges with which you apply makeup (or take it off if you like buttons and internet in your cleansing routine like I do) are your tools. In order to get the best performance and longest functional life from them, it is important to keep them clean. Maintenance does not have to be costly or time-consuming, though – I know I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of cleaning my brushes with expensive brush shampoos and tools.

How frequently you wash your brushes is typically a preference and usage (as well as how many brushes you have) thing – obviously someone who wears a full face every day should wash more frequently than someone who wears a bit of makeup a few days a week. I don’t wear a full face very often, so I usually wash my brushes every 2-4 weeks with regular usage, more often if I think I need it. Eventually, you’ll be able to tell at a glance when something needs to be washed – the greyish-black brush used for last week’s smokey eye is not going to be so great for today’s light, neutral eye for work so you’ll want to clean it beforehand or reach for a different brush.

Turn your tap to warm (not hot – may damage your brush and not cold because good luck getting, say, foundation out with cold) water and – avoiding to get the ferrule wet – hold the brush under the stream with the bristles angled downwards to saturate the bristles and (hopefully!) rinse away some of the product.

How to Wash Makeup BrushesHow to Wash Makeup Brushes

Next, you’ll need to shampoo the brush – you can buy a cleanser specifically for makeup brushes if you want, but I personally use Johnson’s Baby Wash on my brushes (any baby wash or shampoo will do just fine). It is gentle enough to clean both natural and synthetic bristles without overdrying and/or damaging the fibers. If I’m worried my brushes are particularly grungy, I’ll use a drop or two of Dawn dish soap (the anti-bacterial varieties are good for this if you’re concerned about germs – I’m not) in conjunction with the baby wash for a deep clean. Other times, if I’m lazy and only have 1-2 brushes but am also cleaning my BeautyBlender, I’ll just use my BlenderCleanser Solid (left in the photo, white disc).

Some companies (like Sigma!) offer neat brush-cleaning gloves to help facilitate the process, and while these are fun-looking, they are not necessary. Your hands will do just fine – or, if you have a handful of brushes to wash and you don’t want your hands to get prune-y, you can get creative like I did (above photo) and use something like the surface of my Ziploc container lid. In this case, the indents for the logo will help work the soap into the bristles, almost acting like an agitator. If using your hand, dispense a small amount of the soap into the palm of your hand and swish the brush back and forth in your palm, then work the shampoo in further with your fingers. If you’re doing what I am demonstrating above, dispense the soaps onto the lid (or into your fancy Sigma glove), and swish and swirl it back and forth. The suds you create will eventually look dingy and frankly, gross, but that’s normal and fine and means your efforts are paying off.

Rinse your brush in the same way you initially saturated it, under the faucet with the bristles angled towards the drain, avoiding the ferrule as much as possible (exposing the ferrule to too much moisture can work away at the glue and cause the brush-head to come loose). Use your fingers to thoroughly rinse the bristles until they are their original color and free of suds.

Gently squeeze bristles to drain excess water from them, then reshape and dry. Check back on Wednesday for some tips on how to dry your makeup brushes!

Disclosure: None of this stuff was sponsored. That said, some of the links in this post are affiliate links – this means I may get a very small percentage of the sale if you decide to buy something. I’ll only tell you that something is awesome if I have verified it myself!

Milani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil

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I overlooked it for years, but the presence of groomed brows can really do a lot for a face. There are various methods by which you can achieve this – brow pencil, brow powder, tinted gel/mousse/pomade, brow tinting (dye), or if you’re extra-extreme you could go for the whole, “permanent makeup,” bit aka tattooed on awkwardness. If you want to keep things easy, pencils or powders are the way to go. I wanted to try a pencil without shelling out for an Anastasia Brow Wiz, so enter Milani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil (which has a similar idea, packaging-wise, as the Brow Wiz).

 Milani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil - Natural Taupe and Dark BrownMilani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil – Natural Taupe and Dark Brown
The messy cap? That’s why you don’t cap things without looking at them.

Surprisingly hard to get me hands on in my area (no one seems to carry it! I had to order it), I was excited when the products arrived. The stick has two ends – one end houses the product, and the other contains a spoolie brush, both are protected with a cap. The center of the stick is printed with the product name and color but it is printed in gold (the stick, as you can see, is a light brown or taupe color) and is difficult to read. Fortunately, closer to the spoolie end there is a band with the color printed on it. I purchased Dark Brown and Natural Taupe; my brows either neither color, but I planned to use them in concert with one another and blend them to get closer to my haircolor.

The Milani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil was a bit surprising to me. It is both wider in diameter than I anticipated and it is SOFTER than I anticipated. Softness isn’t usually a quality we think of as negative, but when it comes to a brow pencil, you want a stiff product so you can easily produce dozens (or however many) of feather-light strokes that help define your brows. With this pencil it is entirely to easy to slip and end up with an awkward, hard line because it is so soft.

They have the consistency of a liner pencil (it glides too much!) rather than what a brow pencil should have. That isn’t to say this is a bad product, but there is a learning curve associated with it – you have to hold the product at an angle and use short, flicking strokes to achieve the right look. If you went a little too far, don’t worry – you then blend it out/together with the attached spoolie. Since the Milani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil is so soft, blending isn’t a very big deal…you will want to clean the spoolie off every so often, though, just as you would any other brush.

Milani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil swatchesMilani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil swatches – light hand above, more pressure below
From Left: Natural Taupe, Dark Brown

In all, although the products serve their purpose, I am on the fence about repurchasing. I really like brow powders and feel that I can get a more precise look with powder and wax than I can a soft pencil like this. This product, however, is very purse/makeup-bag-friendly and for those with much darker brows than myself may not be bothered by softness (rather, the ease of getting too bold a line). Someone who has more time to spend on their makeup regularly might be more satisfied than I am but ease and efficiency are both things that come into play, especially when I’m talking about a product called, “EasyBrow.” I don’t hate it, and I’m not immensely disappointed – but I was definitely hoping for greater performance from this product. If you’d like to give it a shot, the Milani EasyBrow Automatic Pencil is available from retail drugstores and drugstore.com for around $5.

First Look: Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki

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An awesome friend (we’ll call her C) of mine recently decided to gift me a brush, and let me choose what brush it was – I chose a Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki! The Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki had been on my lust list for a while after hearing Jaclyn Hill rave about this brush in, oh, every video she has, so this was very exciting. Most of my brushes are what would be considered low-to-mid-end – I got the Coastal Scents Elite set on sale for something like $25, and the rest are random – cheap brushes that I thought would be “throwaways,” that turned out to be awesome, a few (inexpensive but great) bdellium tools and two Real Techniques. Word on the street is that Sigma is as good as (perhaps better than) MAC at a nicer price.

The outer shipping box had been manhandled by USPS and was not a maiden fair, so we’ll start the unboxing here:

Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki - Packaging

Also, let it be known that said friend is not affiliated with Sigma. She didn’t get a freebie for the sake of promotion, either. She’s just awesome! Here’s the rest of what was in the shipping box, including the brush that has been removed from the fancy sleeve depicted first:

Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki - everything that was in the shipping box

The protective sleeve you see on the brush, below is actually two parts. The lower handle is covered with a cellophane piece (with an awesome holographic Sigma sticker), and the upper handle and head are protected by a thicker, rigid plastic piece. They mean business about packing and protecting their product.

Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki - Unboxed

This sucker will be an important part of my foundation routine – especially come July, as I am not hiring a makeup artist for my wedding. So pristine!

Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki - Unboxed 2

Hello, gorgeous. I can’t wait to awkwardly stipple and buff foundation into my face with you. Let’s face it, stippling looks awkward. You’re hitting yourself in the face rapidly. It is silly.

Sigma F80 Flat Top KabukiSigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki Brush

Take a look at how dense this brush is, perfect for buffing foundation in and building coverage. Though I plan to use it with a liquid foundation (MUFE HD Invisible Cover in 118, Flesh), you could probably use this for mineral or powder foundation.

Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki - so dense!

I haven’t had the chance to use it yet (my skin has been wonky, but is almost 100% again) but I plan on using it tomorrow and am excited to see how awesome my very first Sigma brush is. Thank you again, C!

Disclosure: This post was not sponsored. That said, some of the links in this post are affiliate links – this means I may get a very small percentage of the sale if you decide to buy something. I only recommend products I’ve tried and verified as awesome.