How to Clean Your Brushes

The truth is that you need to wash your brushes because bacterial grows on them…eww. With that said, the bacteria on your brushes gets transferred to your face and can cause you to break out. No one wants their face covered in these ickies so here’s how you clean your brushes…

**Spot Cleaning: This is just a surface clean to get any extra color or build up that is on your brushes off. I spot clean my eyeliner brushes everyday and the rest about three times a week. Your brushes will be a little damp so make sure you won’t need them within the next few hours.

What you’ll need:

-your dirty brushes

-a brush cleaner (there a many out there but I personally love the M.A.C brush cleanser and its only $12 at a M.A.C counter or online)

-a clean washcloth or small towel

Steps:

- fold your washcloth/towel into fourths (fold in half horizontally and then fold in half vertically)

-pour a quarter size amount of brush cleaner onto the towel

-gently swipe the bristles on your brush back and forth on top of the spot of brush cleaner and repeat until the brush looks clean

-pull back the top part of your towel and repeat the previous step with your next brush (The cleaner you applied to the top “layer” of your towel should have bled down through the next three sections of your towel. To keep from wasting product just pull back a section of towel to reveal a new spot of cleanser.)

- apply more brush cleanser as needed

-shape brushes when finished and lay flat to dry

**Deep Cleaning: If you use your brushes every day make sure to deep clean your brushes once a week. If you us them less often clean them once every two weeks. This is a deep down clean and is a little more time consuming than spot cleaning but it is necessary to keep your brushes clean and in good shape.

What you’ll need:

-your dirty brushes

-a small bowl

-gentle shampoo

-a small towel

-a book

Steps:

-combine luke warm water and some shampoo (I use Johnson’s baby shampoo for this) in the bowel. You want to keep this fairly shallow because you don’t want to get water into the ferrule (the metal part that holds the bristles to the handle) of your brush

-swirl bristles in the mixture

-run bristles (bristles pointing down) under luke warm water

-repeat steps two and three until the water runs clean

- gently squeeze the extra water out of the bristles and reshape

-place your book (lay flat) and towel next to each other and place the handle of the brush on top of the book and the bristles down on the towel. The book provides a slight elevation so the water runs out of the bristles and doesn’t get in the ferrule.

-repeat with all brushes and allow 24 hours to dry in this position