Hey guys, this is Jen and today I wanted to show you how I clean my brushes.
I'm actually going to show you 3 different methods that I use sort of interchangeably depending on the situation and like, how I need my brushes to be cleaned that day.
We're going to sort of start from the easiest and then work our way up to like, the most deep clean that you need to do for your brushes once in a while.
Here are some of my nasty, nasty, yucky brushes
To start off, I just wanted to show you how I spot clean my brushes.
One of my favorite methods is using Wet Ones which is just an over-the-counter, general purpose, hand sanitizing type of wipe
and it's supposed to be for your hands and face so you know it'll be okay for your brushes, plus it kills 99.99% of germs.
They're literally just like a wet wipe
So I'll just fold it into sort of a small little square like this. As you can see, this brush is very very dirty.
So what I'll do is I just take this little wipe and I literally just work it into the wet wipe.
It has a little bit of texture so it's pretty good at grabbing the makeup off of it.
For an eye brush, for instance, you can use it a day and then spot clean it and be able to use a different color the next day without the previous color transferring.
So the problem with spot cleaning is you also won't necessarily get a perfect pearly white brush.
There's still a bit of residue on the brush, even if it doesn't come off onto the paper that much.
So the next method I like to use is a slightly more intensive spot cleaning but it is using Parian Spirit, which is a brush cleaner that has some oils and stuff in it and it smells kind of citrusy.
I actually bought this at IMATS last year and I bought the set that comes with the bottle of brush cleaner plus it also has this little jar, this glass jar.
It has this ring and then the mesh part sits on top, just like that, so there's a gap between this and the bottom of the jar.
I'm just going to pour that a little bit into the jar.
I usually only pour it about up to where the mesh part is.
Here we have our dirty brush. I'm just going to put it inside here and work the bristles back and forth.
So then all I need to do is wipe off the extra liquid from the brush
As you can see, my brush is now nice and clean.
Just as an example I want to show you one that's a little more intense. This is an eyeliner brush.
So I'm going to let it soak a little bit
And then I'm going to rub the bristles against it and as you can see, immediately, all of that black residue is coming up out of the brush.
Now when I take the tissue to wipe off the excess, you can see some of that black residue coming off.
Here's a very dirty eyeshadow brush.
I'm just going to work this in. I'm just wiping it down again and as you can see, my brush is nice and clean.
Now for the third method I wanted to show you a way of really deep cleaning brushes.
Sometimes the product goes way up into the bristles and it's really difficult to clean with any sort of spot cleaning, so to get your brushes completely fresh and clean I recommend doing a deep clean.
You can use a few different things to deep clean your brushes. Baby shampoo works really, really well. I have tried that. It does work well.
And you can also use something like MAC Brush Cleaner which I also have and that also does work well.
But I think for most people it's really easy to clean your brushes without having any special products.
And for that you just take a clean plate like this.
And then just take some dish soap. This is actually olive oil that I put into a honey bear jar. I'm going to just add that.
The dish soap is going to help disinfect the bristles and clean them and then the olive oil is also going to help condition them as well.
So I usually add just a little bit of water.
So now I'm going to show you a particularly dirty brush. This is my blush brush just because, um, maybe it will be more exciting on camera to clean this one.
But I have my little mixture right here. I usually just mix it up like that.
Make all the water in there.
And then I literally just work that into my hand.
I usually try not to turn the brush this way too much because you want the water going down. You don't want it going up the ferrule at all.
'Cause that could loosen the glue on your brushes. But I just work that like that.
I usually do a few brushes at a time.
I'm going to add some water.
As you can see, all of that nice, lovely disgustingness is coming out of the bristles.
Wet the bristles first
Grab a bit of the soap mixture, work that into my hand.
Now we're going to rinse through the brushes. These are the ones that already had some soap on it earlier so I'm just going to turn the water on.
You don't want it to be really too hot or too cold.
So with the brush angled downward I'm just going to put my hand under the bristles and I'm just going to work it through.
You're going to want it to be totally clean so that the water running through is completely clear. You don't want any soap residue in there.
Once I give it a good squeeze and the water is totally clear then I'll take this which is the Sigma Dry & Shape
I was kind of skeptical about using this, just because I didn't know if it would work. I mean, one of the most annoying things for me is brushes that take a long time to dry, which is why I usually prefer natural bristle brushes over synthetic ones.
But this one actually really does work for me and I really like using it a lot.
I just pull it once through to see what really fits tightly.
That one seems to work pretty well.
And I'll just pull it through so that it's pretty snug on there.
Just like that!
So now I've finished cleaning all of my brushes. I've rinsed them through and everything.
I put some of my larger ones all in the, uh, Dry & Shape right here.
I especially like using synthetic bristles in here because synthetic bristles usually take a lot longer to dry and this really helps cut down on the time.
And then the rest of my brushes are all down here. What I did is I just took a tea towel.
Or you could use a regular towel too.
I just roll it like this so that it has some height to it.
And then I'll take a paper towel and just lay it down. And that way, the brushes will be at an angle downward and any of the remaining liquid is going to drain down onto the paper towel and not up into the ferrule of the brush.
So I hope that was really informative for those of you who are sort of unsure of how to wash your brushes and wanted to know the difference between spot cleaning and deep cleaning as well.
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This is Jen and I will talk to you guys later! Bye!