Personally I use either a mild shampoo, an antibacterial hand wash or a specialised brush shampoo to clean my brushes but whatever you use it's still a time consuming, and repetitive task. Dampen, aggravate the hairs, rinse, squeeze, repeat, till your fingers look like prunes and your back aches. There are easier ways though, and no I don't mean throw them in the washing machine - can you believe that was a retweeted beauty tip from a major clothing retailer? just no! A year or so back now Sigma Beauty introduced their Sigma Spa Brush Cleaning Glove.
These textured silicone gloves supposedly makes the whole brush cleaning experience quicker and easier. All you do it work your damp, brush onto the various nodules to aggravate the hairs and remove the rogue make up from deep within your brush.
Fabulous, I thought but then I saw the price! On the official Sigma Beauty site, the gloves start at $35 excluding shipping, and whilst we can get one for £33.95 from a UK retailer called Beauty Chamber, I still think it's pretty expensive for what it is. I'm not knocking it by any means, I've read lots of reviews and by and large they're pretty positive but just take a step back and actually look at what it is?
What is it? Well the original at least is just a silicone oven glove by another name.I love silicone baking equipment, despite having a rubber like appearance it's an ideal conductor and insulator of heat making it ideal for baking, and of course for making oven gloves with.
When that particular thought hit me I had a look in our our kitchen, and voila I found one, an old but very pretty heart design, silicone oven mitt. Admittedly it's not quite as textured as the Sigma product but you can get quite a bit of friction from the heart shapes and from the different textures on the side of the fingers. The Sigma ones are also lined to keep your hands a bit drier, and whilst my glove doesn't have a lining some of the more expensive ones do.
I've been using my improvised brush glove used for just over a year now I think it does a pretty decent job when it comes to cleaning my make up brushes, it's still a boring task (even Jasper agrees on that one) but at least my fingers don't look quite as prune like as they used to,
I'm not sure where our mitt came from but knowing my mum who detests oven gloves of all kinds (weird woman, she's rather use a towel), she won't have spent a lot of money on it. Just a quick search online brought up lots of different types of gloves ranging from between less than £3 to around £6.
My tip would be to go for a glove that's either very textured or that features a number of different textures. The more different types and sizes of textures that you have the easier it is to do different sized brushes. My glove only has two or three different types on it so it's isn't the best for smaller brushes, and whilst it's workable I really needed another solution.
Quite a while ago now these little facial cleansing and exfoliating pads from Soap & Glory were all the rage for washing your face. Beauty is a fickle thing though and the introduction of cleansing brushes, and the reemergence of the humble face flannel meant that their popularity waned.
I probably should have binned mine but I hung on to it and eventually found another use for it. The two different textures on the pad make it ideal for cleaning some of my smaller eye and lip brushes. Like the glove the texture helps to aggravate the bristles making it easier to give them a deep clean.
I can't find this particular Soap & Glory pad anymore, but they do have a mitt in their range
that would be ideal for cleaning make up brushes and for washing your face :) You can however find similar facial massagers and cleansing pads all over ebay and on the internet for about a £1, and I'm sure that a blogger (I'm thinking Gemsmaquillage?) mentioned that Primark were doing something similar. I haven't seen them in store myself but I've seen them on a few Dutch blogs and videos and I think they are about 2 Euros each.
It just goes to show that it's sometimes worth looking around and having a good think before you spend money on anything. I was fully prepared to spend my money on the Sigma glove but by having a root round in the cupboards I've saved myself a bit of money, and I'm actually getting more use out of some products that I already own. Brush cleaning is still a chore and I guess it will be till somebody invents self cleaning brushes but anything that makes my life even a little bit easier is always well worth it. Do you hate washing your brushes as much as I do? Leave me a comment and let me know x
