re.commend: Everyday makeup brushes!

As many of us do, I recently went home to visit my family over the winter holidays. Trying to pack light, I faced the perpetual dilemma of what makeup to pack! In the first of a mini-series, I'll be sharing you the essentials that I managed to pare down my routine to. I will be posting about the brushes I eventually packed (actually turned out to be slightly different from these), the makeup I packed to travel for two weeks, skincare, and extra bits and bobs of beauty essentials. 

First up - my everyday brushes! 

So, I managed to get my little stash of brushes down to these 6 brushes that I use everyday. These six brushes allow me to create a wide variety of looks, and to be honest, if I just cleaned them after each use I don't really need any others.  Let's meet the first three. 

Real Techniques Expert Face Brush: I now use no other brush for bases. This small sized brush with fairly short and dense bristles is extremely soft and is mighty effective at buffing in foundation. I use it with all my foundations and BB creams that are creamy in texture as I prefer to use my fingers for the more watery ones such as the L'Oreal Nude Magique. It gives a beautifully natural finish with a medium coverage in one layer (though you could easily do an extra layer on top for more). It words especially well with my base of choice at the moment - the Dr Jart++ Platinum BB cream. This brush is handy because it can also be used to apply a contour by pinching the bristles in slightly, and for cream blush.

Eyelash and eyebrow comb: This one is from Ecotools, but is a standard eyelash separator and eyebrow smoother that is available from many different brands. The teeth on this version are plastic, which I prefer to the metal ones. The metal ones I think are slightly more long-lasting and effective, but I don't like the idea of going near my eye with them!

Angled liner brush: I can use this brush both for liner and occasionally to fill in my eyebrows at the ends. I bought it at an art supply shop for a few pounds and I've found it to be much thinner than the ones I have from other brush sets. I prefer this as I tend to use it instead of a liquid liner on days where I have a more natural look going on. Either dip the brush into a deep brown or black eyeshadow and use it to line your upper lash line, or simply push the brush into the base of your lashes (as a push-liner) for an even more natural look that just makes your lashes appear a bit fuller.

next up we have...Small, flat-fluffy shadow brush: I've called this a flat-fluffy brush as it's neither a lay-down brush like those for concealer, not a fully-fledged fluffy brush that we'll see in a moment. This brush, along with the next two, is from a set of about 30 from Coastal Scents. I use this brush to apply eyeshadow all over my lids, and it is small enough to use in the crease by dipping just one side of the brush into the crease colour, turning it so that the coloured side faces up towards your forehead and smushing it into your crease with your eyes open. Use windscreen wiper sweeps along your creaseline and then use a fluffier brush to blend this line out. It's also small enough to apply eyeshadow to the bottom lashline and to 'smoke out' eyeliner.

Small pencil brush: A handy alternative to applying colour more accurately to the crease. Also useful for inner corner highlighting and smudging out eyeliner. In a pinch, you could also use this to blend out the edges of your concealer (though I use my fingers!)

and finally...Big fluffy brush: Although not identical in shape, this brush performs the function of a MAC 217 (a holy grail of many makeup artists) as it is flat-but-fluffy. This means you can use it facing horizontally to sweep along the crease, or turn it 90 degrees to blend out the edges of a smokey eye.

So, these are the essential brushes I came up with - I actually ended packing a slightly different set to match the products I was taking home with me (more powder products than cream) but I only swapped out two of these for face brushes. Look out for a post on this coming soon!

I'd love to hear your recommendations for essential brushes, as I'm still collecting!