A brush with perfection & Winner of Sephora Giveaway

As much as I love makeup and have done for years, I've never had a great set of brushes. I've always used the little applicators that come with products and I may have had the odd brush that came with something else or a gift set, but it just never occurred to me that I had all these wonderful products but not the right tools to apply them. But better late than never - I have seen the light and I am now the very proud owner of some of the most talked about brushes in blogiverse - a Real Techniques Starter Set. I was choosing between the Starter set and the Core collection, but in the end I decided to go for brushes that I'll use with my eye make up since I'm quite comfortable in using my fingers for foundation at the moment, but am a bit more clumsy with my fingers when it comes to eye shadows.

These brushes are made of taklon, and since I had no idea what that is I had to look it up. It turns out that taklon is a synthetic fiber that is used for high quality brushes, and apparently they are considered more hygienic than brushes made from real hair since the taklon brushes are easier to clean - so I don't know about you but I certainly learned something new there.

The set contains 5 different brushes and the packaging can niftily be folded in different ways e.g. into a stand. First we have the Base Shadow Brush which is a wide brush with sufficient firmness so it's easily controlled with all bristles moving in the same direction. It's intended to add color all over the lid in an easy smooth sweep and for me this is now my every day go to brush so I'll probably need to pick up a few more of it so I don't need to clean it every day.

Then we have the Deluxe Crease Brush which is soft and chubby and intended for contouring. It is quite big and at least on me it is almost too big to fit in the crease but I guess that will just help to blend eye shadows together with minimum effort. I do quite like it and may even use this as a base eye shadow brush too.

The Accent Brush is a short stubby wide brush designed for precision detailing, spotlighting, highlighting, and smudging and for me it might work better than the crease brush simply because it's smaller and fits better in the crease. Using this brush is like drawing with charcoal - you can draw fine lines, thick line or blend and smudge it as you wish, and regardless of what look you go for you have absolute control of the shades and colors you work with - it's superb!

Even finer precision application is possible with the Pixel-Point Eyeliner Brush. It's a slightly tapered brush, that creates a fine point at the tip of the brush, suitable for applying eyeliner. Personally I'm not used to using a brush when I apply eyeliners, which is why I tend to avoid gel liners or shadows, so it will take me some getting used to. But having tried it a few times now this brush really does give a completely different look, particularly for under eye liners so I will definitely keep on practising how to use a brush for eyeliners. 

The last brush is a Brow Bush which has that easily recognizable diagonally shape to it, that makes filling in eyebrows an easy task. Again I'm not used to using a brush for my brows, but working with it is so intuitive and it gives a much softer look than a pen for sure, and even if you still want to use a pen, you could help to blend it in with this brush.

If you need any tips and hints on how to use the brushes, there are of course lots of tutorials by the Pixiwoo's on You Tube or on the Real Techniques home page.

From left to right: 

Deluxe Crease brush, Base Shadow Brush, Pixel-Point Eyeliner Brush, Accent Brush, Brow Brush

I can't say enough good things about these brushes. They are light weight, they sit well in your hand and using them is the most natural thing ever - they're like a natural extension of your hand. All the brushes are amazingly soft and smooth, but still very firm to work with for precision. I haven't noticed any stray bristles yet or too much fall out of eye shadow pigmentation and it seems as if powders just sit well on the brush. These brushes work great and I will definitely be getting the core collection too, come pay day. I love these brushes so much I barely want to use them, although that of course would defeat the purpose - but I do vow that I will take excellent care of them, add some new friends to the brush family every now and then, and give them a good home for many years to come.

I'm also want to let you know that the Sephora Giveaway that ran last week to celebrate that I had reached 100 followers on both GFC and Bloglovin' has closed. Thank you so much to everyone who entered and I'm very happy to announce that the winner is Rachael M. Congratulations and I hope you'll enjoy the Mango goodies as much as I do!