Saturday, March 5, 2011

My Two Absolute Favorite Makeup Brushes

Hello Ladies,

I'm on the roll after I discovered the greatness of scheduled posting on Blogger. Now I can write several posts when I feel inspired and schedule them instead of forcing myself to write every day. And I'm a bad writer because I don't like to write.

I am not sure if I said that before, but I am absolutely in LOVE with EcoTools brushes. At this point I think I have almost all of the ones they released, save some individual ones. Having said that, there are two brushes that I can't live without now and use them every time I apply makeup. Unfortunately these two brushes are not yet available in UK, and on the whole UK selection looks really sad compared to US selection. 


Both of these brushes came from different sets. I have to confess that I bought EcoTools Alicia 5 Piece Brush set only for the duo fibre brush, because I've never seen it anywhere else and I WANTED it. I have no idea who Alicia Silverstone is, nor do I really care, (although her face seems familiar) and I haven't even touched the rest of the brushes in this set. Or the bag for that matter, although it is pretty nice bag.


EcoTools 5-Piece Mineral Brush set gets a little big more love from me because I use the whole 2 brushes from there! I use the Baby Kabuki brush as my primary blush brush, and Mineral Powder brush to apply primer.


Both sets are amazing value for the money, especially if you don't have many brushes. Alicia Silverstone one is $15.99 (but I believe it is a limited edition, and the only place I was able find it online is Amazon.com so get it while you can!!!) and the Mineral 5-Piece set is$12.99 at Ulta.com or $10.49 currently on Amazon. Both sets are probably readily available in stores in US, but I don't live there right now so can't comment on that.



Duo Fibre brush: 
I have two other brushes in this type, one by Sigma and another by e.l.f. I can't comment on the e.l.f. Stipple Brush because I just got in the mail, but I have been using Sigma Duo Fibre F50 for several weeks now so I can tell the difference between them. I think I will do a comparison post between all 3 of them once I get some use from e.l.f. Stipple Brush.



As I said, I've been using Sigma's Duo Firbre brush for several weeks now and it worked well. Or so I thought, because I never used a brush like that and simply didn't know better. Then I got the EcoTools one and immediately can tell that it works better for me.  It almost seems like I have to use less foundation with it too, and it blends so WELL. My nose is my problem area when it comes to foundation, because I can never get it to look natural there. With this brush I can. I used this brush to apply the foundation in this post, and I love how my skin looks. Natural but smooth and flawless.

Mineral Powder brush: 
Originally I used this brush to apply my foundation because it is just dense enough to blend very well, but after I started using Duo Fibre brush I designated it to being my primer brush.  I dip this brush in the primer (like with Maybelline The Smoother) or deposit a little primer on my hand and blend from there (like with any tube or pump primers). It's a breeze to blend foundation or primer with it, and I feel it gives me an even coverage all over my face.


Another thing that I like about these brushes is how small they are. I apply makeup in my bathroom, standing in front of the mirror so longer brushes usually get in the way as I like to get up close and personal with my mirror. I would probably have less trouble with longer brushes if I used an actual makeup mirror (which I have), but I have no space for it right now. So shorter brushes work much better for me.






See how small they are compared to my hand? Obviously this is not a good measurement since none of you know how big my hands are, but you just have to trust me when I say I don't have large hands. :)

Overall, I can't live without these two brushes now. What are your favorite face brushes?

~ Lyuba