Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Deep Cleaning Your Makeup Brushes. ♥

As you may already know, it is very important to deep clean your make up brushes at least once a week, to get all the colors you used on them out, but to also prevent bacteria buildup.  If you let the bacteria build up in your brushes, you're more prone to breaking out - never a good thing!  Cleaning your brushes regularly can also lengthen the life of them!

So, what's the difference between deep cleaning & spot cleaning your brushes?:
Spot cleaning is a good, but temporary cleaning of your brushes.  There are many spot cleaning brush cleansers out there to use, and i use the MAC Brush Cleanser for this.  I use spot cleaning mainly for my eye brushes, since i use different color eyeshadows, as it allows me to get the color out & use a different shade of eyeshadow.  I also use it on my face brushes when i don't have enough time to allow them to completely dry.
Deep cleaning is obviously more thorough & 'deep' than spot cleaning.  How i think of the difference between the two is if you were to just rinse your hair under your shower head, without using shampoo, it gets out some oil & dirt, but doesn't truly clean your hair - as opposed to using a deeper cleaning agent, like shampoo!  Kinda make sense? :)

Now, onto the procedure! :)

Note the dirtiness & product still on the brushes - yucky!

So what you want to do is find a good deep cleanser to clean your brushes.  You don't want to use a shampoo that you use on your own hair, because that will be way too harsh for the brush's hairs.  My favorite product to use is Johnson's Baby Shampoo - it's super affordable & works really well!  This massive bottle costs under $10 & will last me for ages!

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♥ Step 1: Lay out your brushes on a towel next to the sink or wherever you're cleaning them.
♥ Step 2: Grab one brush & run it under warm water, make sure not to tip the brushes with the hairs facing upward at all after doing this, because it can cause really bad damage to your brushes - trust me!
♥ Step 3: Squirt a bit of your shampoo into the palm of your hand - the bigger the brush, the bigger the puddle needs to be!  Less is usually more, but if you didn't take as much as you actually needed, you can always take more shampoo or wash it twice.
♥ Step 4: Swirl the brush around into the little puddle of baby shampoo.  It'll lather up really nicely!  Occasionally squirt out the foam from the bristles between your fingers & thumb.
♥ Step 5: Once you think you're done, rinse hair under warm water & squirt out everything until the water runs clear.
Step 6: Reshape & lay brushes flat to dry on the towel!  Depending on the brush, it may take a couple hours to a day.  I usually wash mine in the afternoon & leave them overnight to dry to be ready to use in the morning.
Voila!  You should be left with gorgeous, clean, nice-smelling brushes ready to use!


Hope i helped some of you girls :)



9 comments:

  1. geez i need to do thise so bad.
    thank you for sharing.<3

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  2. oo thanks for this! i think im gonna do it

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  3. i never know what kind of soap to wash my brushes with, baby shampoo is genius! thank ya darling :)

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  4. I use Johnsons baby shampoo too :) hehe xx

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  5. great tutorial :>


    www.donnaromina.blogspot.com

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  6. This post was SUPER helpful, i'm going to have to clean my brushes with this method soon! xo

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  7. I love your header! You might need to make me one :) ... also really enjoying your blog XX

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  8. so in need of brushes!

    <3

    Rosa

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  9. in *need* of makeup brushes. i've gotten so used to just using my fingers. have you ever used sonia kashuk? would you recommend her?

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