How to Clean your Makeup Brushes

Second only to washing your face on a regular basis, the most important step you should take to ensure your skin's health and easy makeup application is making sure that you clean your makeup brushes on a regular basis. Like anything you use or touch often, makeup brushes can collect bacteria over time. However, since those brushes are going to rub against your skin (especially your sensitive facial skin), you should really be sure that your brushes are as clean as possible to reduce chances of acne or irritation! Also, think about dragging dirty brushes through your makeup every day. Each time you swipe your unclean blush brush across your blush, your basically infusing it with dirt and bacteria. GROSS!!

Keeping your brushes clean also preserves the quality of your brushes. Makeup can cake up on brushes and if left unclean, the brush hairs can begin to degrade and your brushes will fall apart. I don't know about you, but the less often I have to spend anywhere from $20.00 to well over $100.00 for a new brush set, the better!

So, for the good of your skin, your makeup, and your brushes (*cough* wallet *cough*), you should clean your brushes anywhere from once a week to once a month, depending on how often you use them. For example, if you apply makeup at least twice a day, every day, you need to clean your brushes once a week. And of course, if you use makeup less often, you can wait up to a month to clean them. But no matter how thoroughly you clean them or how often, you should consider replacing your brushes every 10 months to a year.

Here's what you'll need to clean your makeup brushes:
1) Dirty makeup brushes
2) A bowl. I'd recommend using one that you don't constantly use for cooking.
3) A clean towel.
4) Brush cleaner. A good brush cleaner will also have a built-in conditioner that will keep your brushes from loosing their natural oils, or softness.

First, pour about 40 ml of brush cleaner into your bowl. I bought FaceSecrets' Professional Brush Cleaner from Sally's Beauty Supply. WARNING: It smells very strongly from rubbing alcohol. Do not do this in a tight space that isn't well-ventilated.

Once you have your cleaner poured, swirl each brush through the cleaner for no more than 10 seconds. If you leave a brush in for too long, the hairs can become dried out at will be damaged.


Bigger brushes like this kabuki will soak up most of your cleanser. To squeeze it out, lightly press the brush against the side of your bowl. You can technically do this with all of your brushes to release the excess liquid. It is important to ONLY dip the hairs into the cleanser, not the whole brush. If you go past the metal part, there's a good chance the glue holding the brush together will begin to disintegrate.

After swirling each brush in the cleaner, wipe it back and forth gently on the towel until all of the makeup and alcohol is out of the hairs. It's going to look a bit gross, but that's good because then you know your brushes are 100% clean!

Look at all the old foundation and bronzer. EWWWW!!!!! This should wash right out of your towel, but if you're worried about staining, use an old towel that you don't use frequently.

The liquid left in the bowl will also resemble mud:

Gross! Empty the bowl immediately and wash it out to prevent staining or the smell from 'sticking' to the bowl.

Your brushes should look gorgeously clean, now!

To allow your brushes to dry properly, stand them upright in a cup or mug for at least 8 hours (I normally give mine 14).

Here, I put my face brushes in one mug and my eye brushes in another to allow more air to circulate. You'll know your brushes are fully dry when they are 1) no longer slippery to the touch and 2) do not smell from rubbing alcohol.

Return of Beauty on the Brain!

Hello my lovely BB's! I'm back and certainly did not forget about you. I'm so sorry I haven't posted in ages. Unfortunately, with school and my job, blogging fell to the wayside and I often did not have time to create the meaningful, informative blogs and reviews you all come here for.

That being said, I certainly did not run out of time for cosmetics and beauty products! Here's just a glance at what I've been up to:

That's a heck of a lot, no? The beauty brain never sleeps, no matter how many exams or work-related meetings come up!

Over the past couple of months, I've accumulated a TON of products to review and incorporate into tutorials for you BBs. Some have been awesome; others were less than stellar. Nevertheless, I'm still look forward to telling you all about my beauty exploits.

There were some incredible stand-out products that I came across. First up are the deep conditioning treatments I've been using in my hair:

Both were purchased at Sally's Beauty Supply and while they both are nice, one definitely works better than the other. So, look for an upcoming Battle of the Brands between these two!

Next, I tested the urban legend of using artist brushes (sold at Michael's Craft Store for painting) to apply my makeup.

Please pardon my dirty brushes! I was just getting ready to do a brush cleaning tutorial!

Did they work? Find out soon in an Ultimate Brush Smack Down!

What else? Oh, yes! I tested a new brush cleanser, so look for a review on it soon.

Also got a new boar bristle brush, which is supposed to smooth frizzy hair and keep the natural oils from building up.


So far, I'm loving it! My hair has never, ever, EVER felt so soft and manageable. If you have coarse, frizzy hair, I would definitely recommend investing in one. I got mine at Sally's Beauty Supply for under $6.00.

Another awesome cosmetic acquisition was this package of facial/makeup remover wipes that I bought at XXI Forever of all places.


They smell sooo nice and I love using them to clean up makeup through out the day or to totally get rid of makeup at night. They are soothing, refreshing, and leave my skin smelling sweet. Great price, too (only $2.80)!

Oh, yes. The holiday season AND my birthday also came and went. Thanks to my amazing family and fantastic friends, I got some super sweet goodies to share with you! First up is this nail polish set from my dad:

Isn't it CUTE?! I love the teal one and the silver glittery one the most, but it's such a great mini set of OPI's most popular colors.

My fantabulous boyfriend somehow managed to get a hold of an Urban Decay Naked palette for me for my birthday. It's my latest makeup addiction:


It's incredible. He's incredible. Be jealous =) HAHA! But in all seriousness, this is an amazing palette, so expect a review and tutorials based around it.

Then, since my mom is pretty much the coolest person ever, she totally out-did herself and managed to snag a bottle of MAC's Mean and Green nail polish from the sold-out Venomous Villains collection for my birthday. The duo-chrome shade didn't photograph perfectly, but here's a quick peek:


I've been wearing it for almost a week straight and have gotten dozens of compliments on it. I will do a post soon with better photography and easier-t0-see color swatches.

And lastly, my good friend Morgan (who's blog you should check out over here if you are interested in writing techniques) got me the makeup Bible for my birthday:


It's so... pretty! All of the looks are beautiful and Jemma is a brilliant makeup artist. So, in honor of this fabulous book, I will be starting a new series called Masterclass Mondays, where I will do one look from the book each week. Look for it soon!

OH! And I just realized I forgot to photograph this with the rest of the group of items, but I got this super-awesome nail polish at Disney World in December:


It's from OPI's Alice in Wonderland collection and is called "Off With Her Red" (Get it? Get it?!). It's a lovely color, so look for a review on it soon.

Honestly, I'm so glad to be back to blogging again. I have so many fantastic blogs planned and I'm really excited to post them for you. Thanks for sticking around with me!

Survey! Would you rather...

#1. Would you rather go out with messy hair and nice make-up, or nice hair and no make-up?
I pretty much always go out of the house with nice makeup and messy hair. Lol.

#2. Would you rather shave your eyebrows or have your eyelashes fall out?
Eek! I don't pencil my eyebrows OR wear fake eyelashes, but I guess for safety reasons I'd rather shave my eyebrows. Eyelashes are super important because they protect your eyes from debris and dust. So, for the purpose of this question, I'd learn to pencil in my eyebrows.

#3. Would you rather be forced to shop at only MAC or Sephora for the rest of your life?
Sephora! MAC is overpriced and kinda snooty. Sephora also carries many different brands of makeup which I feel gives you more variety.

#4. Would you rather wear the lipgloss/lipliner look or 80's perm?
I'm pretty sure I could rock the 80's perm =P Lol.

#5. Would you rather leave the house with an obvious foundation line or overdone blush?
Overdone blush, for sure! That can always be blended out or you can go for the prima ballerina/baby doll look. A foundation line doesn't work on any one.

#6. Would you rather wear MC Hammer pants or biker shorts in public?
Probably MC Hammer pants since those are kinda chic right now (Harem pants, anyone?).

#7. Would you rather have a bad orange-y spray tan or really weird tan lines that can't be covered?
I'm used to weird tan lines because of swim team. One piece bathing suits that have criss-cross straps never line up the same, so I was constantly rocking the octopus arms across my back.

#8. Would you rather have a bad haircut or bad hair color?
Bad hair cut. That can be covered up a number of ways and you can always get extensions. At the same time, with products like Developlus's Color Oops ($12 at Walgreens), you never have to have a bad hair color again!

#9. Would you rather have youtube or twitter taken away forever?
Twitter. It's pointless to me. Youtube, on the other hand, I could not live without.

#10. Would you rather give up using makeup brushes or mascara?
Honestly, mascara. I forget to put it on some days because I'm really fortunate to have naturally long eyelashes. And something just grosses me out about touching my face with my hands, so I always use makeup brushes.

I want to see what you have to say! Leave your answers in the comments, please!