Cleaning My Brushes

I finally got down to cleaning my brushes after 3 whole years! haha.

When I bought my first brushes from Make Up Store (in October 2006), I was a real greenhorn, and did not even know that makeup brushes have to been cleaned.

My mother never cleaned her brushes all her life. And she was quite surprised when I took mine out to wash. The reason being that she uses cheaper brushes, and basically just threw them away and buy new ones when the bristles start to get messy and fall out.

It was only until I started to take more interest in makeup, and found this thing called Brush Guard, that I discovered that we have to clean our makeup brushes, quite frequently actually.

I did not buy any Brush Guard, as I feel that I have no need to wash my brushes too frequently, and neither do I soak them in water.

All one has to do is pour a 1-cent coin amount of body gel/foam/(whatever you are using) onto the middle of your palm, and swirl the brush on the gel. Keep swirling and swirling until one is satisfied that enough colour has come out. Then wash the dirtied gel from your palm first. Do not put the brush under direct running water to prevent soaking it and loosening the glue on the bristles. Turn down the tap, and let a small, gentle steady stream of water onto your palm. Swirl the brush in the little puddle of water until the foam bubbles stop coming out.

If you feel that the brush is still not clean, just pour another 1-cent coin amount. I prefer to wash in a staggered way, rather than pour a lot a lot of gel at one time. So I repeat this step a third and forth time if I still feel the brush is not clean. For foundation brushes and blusher brush, which are bigger, you can pour a 50-cent amount.

You can roughly gauge whether the brush is clean or not by looking at the colour. If no more colour comes out into the gel when you swirl, means it should be alright.

Double check that the brush is clean by using kitchen towel (thick tissue paper) to blot it dry. No colour trace should appear on the tissue if it is clean. Also, blotting dries the brush faster, so that you don't have to air/sun dry it too long.

By rights, if you makeup everyday, you should wash the brushes every fortnightly to once a month. And especially if you feel that the brush gives you pimples or is too hard because of the dried up makeup on it, like for eyeliner brush and lipstick brush.

I am currently using The Body Mango Shower Gel to clean the brushes, as I really like the mango smell while I doing this chore. haha. I use Dettol for daily shower, but I feel Dettol may be too strong for my brushes, and I definitely wouldn't want them to smell of Dettol after that. lol.

There, you have it. =) Clean brushes that will not give you pimples.