Purchase - Guest Reviewer - Joeybunny brings you the 411 on some of her favorite eye makeup brushes

Hi everyone! Today we’re going to take a little break from makeup and discuss something incredibly important: makeup brushes! Well, more specifically, eye brushes. Elvira and I realized today that neither one of us has ever written about our favorite brushes. [edit: Elvira here. I had forgotten I did write about 2 brushes but it was so long ago my feeble mind forgot!] Here we are, yapping yapping about taupe eyeshadow and taupe eyeshadow and the rare non-taupe eyeshadow, but we’ve never talked about how we apply our taupe eyeshadows! I’m going to assume that you all probably had a mental image of grey-taupes and brown-taupes and silver-taupes magically appearing on our glorious, beautiful eyes every morning*.

*FYI, I think this might be the case for Elvira. However, I’m not so lucky, so here’s a list of my favorite eye brushes.

Now mind you, I’m as much of a brush addict as I am a taupe addict, or an eyeliner addict, or a brown lipstick addict...ok, I’m an addict in general. But I do own 36 different eye brushes. Yes, 36. And yes, I USE all 36 (but not all at once, or every day). It’s nice to have similar brushes for when you can’t wash yours every night. But I will say that I have a varied collection. However, there are a few that I cannot live without. If I had to give up most of my collection, these are the ones I’d keep. Also, the nice thing is that my essential brushes are varied in terms of function and price (yay!) - I think there’s something for everyone in this mix.


1)MAC 217 brush, $22.50 - Ah, the widely beloved MAC 217. This brush is good for an allover wash of color, a nice deposit of crease color (you can deposit AND blend a crease at the same time, wow!), or for all over blending. Super versatile, and it’s also great for a sheer wash of cream shadows too, not just powders! It also is great for under eye concealer, more so than the usually recommended MAC 224.

2)MAC 222 brush, $28.00 - My first HE brush, and still super beloved. I could not apply a crease color to save my life before this. It’s great for a precise yet diffused crease shade, but may not be great for those with smaller lids than I. I also like it to lay down highlight shades and blend the line between the highlight and the crease/outer V shade/s.

3)Essence of Beauty Smokey/Wide eye brush, approx. $5 - Essence of Beauty (EoB) is a drugstore line found in CVS that makes INCREDIBLE brushes. Cheap and long lasting, for sure! This one is my favorite, and is an incredible travel brush because the wide side allows for all over color placement or highlight color placement, and the smokey side can do a crease, outer V, or smudgy liner placement. I have had mine for two years now and not one hair has shed from it. It is also great for practicing a smokey eye, as the brush comes with instructions! Really, totally goof-proof. Oh, and it’s ridiculously soft.

4)NARS #15, $25.50 - This is the famous NARS Smudge brush. Its super dense, specially shaped bristles are perfect for smudging eyeliner or eyeshadow along the upper and lower lashline. Really, I didn’t get that cool rocker smudgy eye look down until I bought this. Sephora and MAC, among other lines, make dupes of this brush shape. However, I say spring for the NARS - NARS brushes are a treat and luxury all by themselves, trust me. This brush is also great for lining the lower and upper waterlines, with some practice. I also like it for applying a hint of shimmer to my tear ducts.


5)Everyday Minerals Eye Kabuki, $7 - Everyday Minerals, an etailer with incredible mineral products (LOVE their foundation and blushes), are known for their amazing cruelty-free synthetic brushes that feel like rabbit’s hair. They’re THAT soft. The Eye Kabuki is a fluffy specially-sized kabuki brush for the eyes. It is perfect for applying concealer (mineral or not) under the eyes gently, or for a wash of color all over the lids. This is the brush I tend to use with my lighter MAC pigments, as it holds and applies the product well without fallout. It is also great for blending. And it’s totally adorable!

6)Sephora Professional (black-handled) Eye Brow Brush #10, $10 - I tend to find angled eye liner brushes like the MAC 266 to be too thin for a good application of powder to my brows. This angled brush is denser and a tad wider so that color is applied to the brows more diffusely, for a more natural look. In a pinch it could be used as an eye liner brush, but only if you wanted a thicker line.

7)Sonia Kashuk (white handle) Bent Eyeliner Brush, $5.99 - Sonia Kashuk is a line found at Target and Space.NK chock-full of affordable and great items. Her brushes are great, and before the advent of the Skunkicorn, the brush that started a MUA craze was this simple little eyeliner brush. The shape of the brush and the the shape of the bristles allow for the perfect thin line of eyeliner, regardless of skill or product used! And the price cannot be beat. Both novices and pros need this brush, trust me.

8)Benefit Talent Brush, $18 - This brush is really talented! It’s meant to be used with Benefit Creaseless Cream eye shadows, and it does a great job of applying cream eye color more densely than the MAC 217, or when turned on its side, applying a liner color. In a pinch it’s also a great concealer brush.


9)Urban Decay Wonder Brush, $15 - Another multipurpose brush, the UD Wonder Brush is incredible at the following: applying eyeshadow as eyeliner (which I could not do before buying this brush!!), applying a precise coat of lip color (try doing a red lip with this brush, it’ll blow your mind), applying concentrated crease color, spot-applying concealer (perfect for pimples!), or doing facial art (when I make swirls and stuff on my face with wet pigments, I use this brush). Its genius lies in its super flat, slightly pointed tip, and the overall small size of the brush.

So here we go! These are my essential brushes, and I hope you enjoyed this and found a tool or two you could find useful. However, I did notice something. I own 8 different “precise crease” brushes (like the MAC 226) yet did not include any of them in my list. These are the kinds of brushes great for those with smaller lids, or for those people who want to do the “cut crease” technique. Admittedly, that isn’t a look I go for all the time (I prefer a more diffuse crease). If I needed to, I could use any of the brushes I just mentioned to do a cut crease, which is the beauty of mastering a tool (and why I love brushes, they’re so fun to experiment with!). However, because I have so many, and I own all the popular ones (the MAC 226, the Essence of Beauty ones, the Studio Tools one), I thought I’d include my favorite:


10) NARS #12, $27 - This brush has the shape of the MAC 226 or the Studio Tools brush or the Essence of Beauty crease brushes, but has a few advantages neither of them have. It is softer, thinner, and more tapered. The other brushes I’ve mentioned can actually be too wide for a super cut crease. This one is not. It is small enough to allow for real precision, but is still soft enough to blend out a line. It really makes for the perfect dramatic crease shape and color.