Hi :)

Born Pretty Store.com offered to send me some free samples of their products to review for you guys and of course I said yes! Here’s what I picked:

A set of brushes, a pot of round neon glitter and a sheet of checker water decals:

Today I want to show you the brushes, I haven’t used the glitter, (it’s that bright in real life! I need it in every colour!), or the decals yet.

The reason I picked the brushes to review is because I wanted a new clean up brush.

I do what’s called the Megan Chair method, (I learned all this on MUA), where you use a brush dipped in nail polish remover and run it around the nail, between the polish and the cuticle, to get a clean line.

When I first started cleaning my nail polish in this way, it was really hard to find a good brush. Most of the make up brushes I tried melted or the glue melted and the bristles fell out. I finally found a good brush but after two years it was ragged and they don’t make them anymore. When I went to buy a new one recently, it was really hard to find recommendations and reviews of brushes. I did buy one based on one of the very few reviews I found but I’ve only been using it two months and its now fraying.

The main problem I have in picking a brush to buy is that I want a brush thinner than the one I have and it’s really difficult to tell the size of a brush until you have it in person. This whole post is based around this idea, knowing the size of the brush and the width of line it will leave between the cuticle and polish. That’s why I picked this set, there are five different sized brushes!

I hope this is helpful to someone out there! :)

Here are the brushes close up, you can see they’re all rounded, (and soft), brushes. Each slightly bigger and thicker than the last. (Numbered 2,4,6,8 and 10 from smallest to biggest).

They each have the same sized dotting tools on the bottom, perfect of course for dots, but also to pick up glitter and rhinestones.

So here’s the review bit :)

I used each brush to clean up one nail and took a pic of each to show you the width of the gap.

No.10 The biggest, thickest and softest brush, this was not good for cleanup! This is my third attempt and I still have a crater left on my clean up line! It was too thick and soft and the brush splayed when I put pressure on it, making it impossible for me to get a smooth line.

Brush No.8. This was very similar to the brush I use now and gave a similar effect but the reason I want a new brush is to get a thinner line, so we continue…

Brush No.6. Looks good right? But it took foreveeer to get it like this. This particular brush would sort of, bend to the side when I’d apply pressure, so I had to delicately use just the tip.

I should mention that these brushes aren’t designed to be used as clean up brushes, that’s just what I want to use them for! I’m sure if I used them for gel, they’d be perfect! (But if we all only used things as they were intended to be used, then back massager sales would plummet!)

Brush No.4. Heaven! This brush was perfect, not too hard, not too soft, not too thick, not too thin. It’s the Goldilocks of brushes! It left a thinner gap between the polish and cuticle, like I wanted, and was really easy for me to use. I immediately left this brush in with my other nail stuff before I even tried the next one.

Huzzah! A new clean up brush for Eleobel! *and all the minstrels danced*

Brush No.2. Ah..I celebrated too soon! This is the brush! This is my new brush that I loveee! I had to go back and replace No.4 with No.2! I felt bad for No.4, she was already settling in with my basecoat and picking out drapes and then I throw her out in the cold! I assumed that No.2 would be too small and too thin for me to use but it was actually perfect! Even easier to control because it was smaller and left an even thinner line! I’m almost looking professional here! :D (Almost..)

The final mani! I used the No.2 Brush to clean up and I used the dotting tool on the bottom to place the glitter on my ring finger. :)

Nails Inc Wigmore Street:

If you like the brushes, (or glitter, or any kind of everything and anything that you use for nail art!) and want to buy from BornPrettyStore.com, they gave me a discount code that you can all use for 10% off your purchase! I’m planning on using it too! I need more of that neon glitter! :D The code is AZHW10.

Thanks for looking!

-Eleobel <3