As a noob nail-polisher, I am a little messy sometimes. When I heard that even professionals sometimes need to use extra brushes to enhance their manicures and clean them up, I thought, "well jeez, I should try that out, too!"
So I went to my local arts and crafts store a while ago (which isn't too fabulous, it's just the nearest Michael's chain!) and bought some small brushes. Later on that week, I realized I forgot a nice bushy brush to help clean up around the sides of my nails or do the "dry brushing" technique with. I was in Ulta, and I figured why not just buy one of their brushes? Brushes at Michaels can come pretty cheap, and while Ulta's brushes are much more expensive, I figured that just meant they were a better quality.
Well, they're not such great quality for using on nails and manicures, as I figured out....
OOPS! This is what my Ulta brush looked like after I soaked it in alcohol for the fourth or fifth time. When I'm cleaning up my stuff after finishing my manicure, I have a habit of putting the extra brushes I've used in some alcohol for a few hours to make sure the chemicals from the gels on them come off. This time, when I soaked the Ulta Crease brush, the alcohol broke up the glue holding the bristles in, and they started moving around and sinking down into the handle where the glue had been.
Yeah, I totally ruined it...but luckily Ulta is still great with their return policy.
On the other hand, this is the really cheap brush I bought from Michaels on sale. It's a "La Corneille" brush by Loew Cornell--a company which, by the way, makes pretty good brushes for the art world anyway, at least for entry level. Since they're made for artistic endeavors to begin with, they're meant to handle more chemicals than a makeup brush.
Notice how the part just below the bristles on the Ulta brush is round, while on the Loew Cornell brush it's flattened out? That means the bristles are also clamped in, which is going to make them last longer, too.
I LOVE using brushes over all, though. I don't think I've ever said it, but I've had some horrible experiences trying to clean up my gel polish with "orange sticks". All it does is push the gel around, whereas a brush with some alcohol just soaks it up and destroys the gel. I need to do more experimenting to find all the right brushes for me, but I don't think I'm ever going to use the rest of the orange sticks I bought!
No comments:
Post a Comment