E-Bay Bargain Brushes - Are they actually a bargain?

We’ve all been there.

 Ebaying.

 You know. You buy one bargain, and then it just snowballs in to loads of little things that individually don’t cost that much, but before you know it – you’ve ordered five zillion of these bits and bobs, and have a hefty dent in your bank balance. Oops.

One such item which always catches my eye are these unbelievably cheap brush sets you see kicking about on there constantly. Fee from MakeupSavvy is an avid Ebayer and seems to find some absolute gems on the site, and it was through one of her posts that I ended up ordering one of these super-cheap brush sets, partially as a bit of an experiment, and they were perfect for coming out to Madagascar – the Suqqu cheek was not coming on a 6 month holiday to Sub-Saharan Africa!

Anyway. These took about 3 weeks to arrive, which was within the time-scale set at the time of purchase (but is a long time for me to wait for anything – hello impatience). They were packaged very simply, and my first  overwhelming impression of these was a pretty strong chemical smell on unpacking the parcel. Nice.

I gave them a good wash with my usual Dr. Bronner’s Soap, and this banished the chemical smell. The brushes all dried really quickly, too. Often on the ads on Ebay for these, they are described as “hair” of many kinds – let me assure you, these are synthetic brushes!

The brush heads are all pretty large – no use for detail work at all, but they are really, really soft. Like, kitten paws soft. I was surprised by how pleasant these are to use. Some of them have quite long bristles, and as such can kick up quite a bit of dust from cheaper powder eyeshadows, but they pick up and deposit a nice amount of product. I find where these perform just as well as more expensive brushes is with liquid or cream formulations – they blend out any cream product beautifully.

I’m glad I bought these brushes, and have got good use out of them, but I’m not sure I would purchase again – partially as I think these have quite a bit of life to go before conking out!

Granted, they are not as beautifully blendy as Wayne Goss’s gorgeous eye brushes, nor are they as soft – but they’re about a millionth of the price. You’re getting good bang for your buck.

Have you bought any E-bay brushes? What did you think?

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