I quaveringly told you all last week I was abandoning my decent brushes to give a set I'd bought at Boots a go. Five brushes for face and eyes cost me €44.95, and I vowed to give them a decent whirl to see if they'd make the grade.
My pre-conceived ideas and prejudices about brushes mean I'm probably always going to recommend that you spend on good tools - it's a basic principle, I think, as decent ones really give that pro finish to makeup. But I am also a woman who loves a bargain and it would be great to find some performers down at the low end of the market.
Regarding the challenge I set myself, did I stick to it? Actually I did, with one exception, the night of the Prudence beauty awards, I just couldn't use 'em. I needed my trusty reliables. The rest of the week though I dutifully cheap-brushed away, and you can read my findings below.
FACE/POWDER BRUSH, €11.99
Look, without getting too lah-di-dah, all I ever really use powder brushes for is to lightly dust foundation with powder to set it. This is grand for that, though it lacks firmness. So you could easily get away with this for powder to be honest, unless you really wanted to spend a lot more. I can't say how long it'll last and cope with multiple washings, so do keep that in mind.
BLUSHER BRUSH, €10.50
By far the worst of the lot. There's no proper shape for blusher application, not enough bristles and none of the necessary firmness you need to ensure a controlled application of product - my Smashbox brush above is about a billion times better, having a nice shaped head, lots of soft bristles and good firmness. It's not possible to apply blusher well with it at all - forget getting a nice little pop of colour on the apples of your cheeks with this one, gals.
CONCEALER BRUSH, €7.50
Advertised
This is ok. The only synthetic offering of the lot, it's got a large head of densely-packed bristles making it nice and firm, which you need for concealer. It's fine for using with stick and cream products, and while some may find the head too large, I don't hate the sizing - my favourite concealer brush is one from Estee Lauder, above, which has a similarly-shaped and sized head. So this is worth a punt.
EYESHADOW BRUSH, €7.50
I was dubious about this before I even tried it. I knew its wide splayed head would be useless for anything other than applying washes of colour and I was right. You'd be very hard pressed to use this brush to lay down colour precisely, which the other two shown above are great at achieving. It's actually fine for applying one shade - the sort of makeup you might wear to work during the week, for example. It can also be brought into play as a blending brush, which it does an ok job of, but you will not be using this to create a gorgeously-finished smokey eye, believe me.
EYESHADOW BLENDER, €7.50
I didn't love this. Out of preference I prefer blender brushes with tapered tips like the Crown brush above, as I find them more precise. This is messy and spreads shadow too much, so for a cheaper blender, go for the Boots Eyeshadow brush over this. This could be used to apply a wash of colour across the whole lid, and would be fine for that.
General observations
For cheaper brushes, these feel fine on the face. They're not the softest brushes I've used, but equally, they're not the scratchiest by a long shot. There was very little shedding and they don't look too cheap and nasty, but one criticism is that there's nothing on the handles to identify them once you've taken them out of the packaging, which could confuse a novice. The only thing I can't report on is how well they wash - I gave up, sorry!
The verdict
Advertised
A couple of these brushes are OK and would suffice in a kit if you're on a budget. But if you're expecting precision tools, then think again: you can't do anything precise or technical with these at all. However, if you're really reluctant to shell out for a whole kit of pro brushes then you could buy the powder, concealer and eyeshadow brushes as cheaper subs and supplement with decent shadow placement brushes and a good blusher brush.
I'd definitely recommend trading up if you can though - good brushes are built to last and treated well will last for years, making them worth the spend.
