A Soft Touch

So usually after my summer internship ends, I take the train to downtown Chicago and loiter for about a half an hour to an hour. On browsing days, I'll swatch makeup from dream-worthy brands like Chanel or try on beautiful yet completely unnecessary dresses, and on buying days I'll scour H&M for a steal. But today was...a brushing day. Today I didn't have as much time, so I went to ULTA and looked at only one product, which prompted me to go to The Body Shop and look at three more similar products.

So basically, I spent a half hour looking at makeup brushes but I wanted to share this on the off chance that someone reading this will have $30 to spend on a makeup brush.

First, I stopped by ULTA because I wanted to look at this brush from Too Faced that I had tried out at a Sephora a couple of days back. It's the Retractable Kabuki Brush, and it is basically the softest brush in the entire world. No, actually. It's pretty and pink and soft and lovely and I basically just carried it around for ten minutes while browsing the store and brushed it against my hand. Unfortunately for me, the price is a whopping $28.50, which could get me 1. my dream skirt from H&M which I haven't gotten around to taking a picture of, 2. a whole slew of things from the thrift store, or 3. $28.50 worth of more practical things...but...this brush is so soft. Words cannot describe the softness that is this brush.


I remembered someone telling me that the brushes from The Body Shop were very soft as well, so I passed by there to see if they would have any comparable brushes for less, and I was quite impressed. First, I found this retractable blush brush for $22 which was incredibly soft as well and pretty much comparable to the Too Faced brush. I also found this Nature's Minerals Blusher Brush, which was $19.




Here's my dilemma. I could be cheaper and get the $19 Body Shop blush brush, but it isn't retractable like the other two and therefore not suitable for bringing with me in my purse. So...I could compromise and get the retractable blush brush from The Body Shop for $22. But, if I'm going to spend the $22 on the Body Shop brush, I might as well spend $28.50 and get the real thing, right? But then there's the debate on softness...I still can't totally decide whether they're the same softness or whether the Too Faced one is softer. I feel like the Too Faced one is softer, but that could just be because it's the first really soft brush I felt...sigh, I really should be more productive with my free time during the summer.

Just as a side note, I also spotted this travel brush set from The Body Shop for $18, which has brushes that are much smaller but just as soft as the ones I've been rambling about.


However, I am on a self-imposed makeup shopping ban for the next month. It's not that I spend that much on makeup...actually, I barely spend anything on it and I think long and hard about purchases like the $5 Milani shadow one I just made...but I feel like I have enough makeup to keep me going already (since I don't wear much besides the basics) so I'm going to try and scale back on small makeup purchases. Which, of course, means more for clothing :)