Mineral Makeup and Portable Brushes!

Well ladies, after doing much research on trying to offer a simple solution for taking your mineral powders portable without going with pressed powders, (explained in this article) the answer is still blowing in the wind right now. I am extremely picky and I meticulously critique anything that is shown to me by vendors claiming they have the best to offer.

I looked into retractable makeup brushes you could throw in your purse with a small jar of minerals and I thought this could be promising and the case the brush was in was very attractive looking. But the brush samples that were presented to me broke in my hand when I went to open them up. Or they broke after retracting and opening only a half a dozen times. Even though I was advised what occurred as being rare, they could not further convince me since once was all I needed, especially once I factor in the defect ratio to my customers. So this brush was not an option for me or for you.

Then I tried out the portable refillable makeup brushes where you load it with your minerals and then dispense the makeup through the brush onto the face when needed. You can adjust it with a dial or use a pump to bring the minerals out to where they can be applied depending on the design of the brush. Now this was also promising until I went beyond the nice and easy concept and analyzed it long term.

Though the concept is fantastic, the downside to these little gizmos is the fact that you cannot ever wash this type of makeup brush. Due to the design of the bristles and how they are held in place, washing them would dissolve glues and loosen hairs that are held in place by tight compact friction. A hole is in the middle of the bristles that feed down into the jar so the minerals can make their way up and into the brush. Without this hole, the minerals could not flow and there are no nickel ferrules for support. Also, once the brush was used, it was slightly difficult to put the cap back on flared bristles without catching them and having them fold backwards. I did discover others that offered retractable bristles, but I was concerned about a similar problem as with the portable retractable brushes. Plus the containers seemed flimsy and not reliable to me.

Sanitizers of course were recommended by the manufacturer, but I prefer being able to cleanse a brush since sanitizing sprays may kill bacteria, but they don’t remove skin or sebum buildup. I also noted this would be another additional cost to my customer. This is a big negative for me when a brush must be handled with kid gloves and cannot be washed by conventional means.

Now beyond the problems with the containers for the brushes, there also was the problem in hair quality. They definitely were not of the caliber of natural hair I like or require. For sensitive skin ladies this would have been a huge issue. The hair was coarser and the tips seemed to be cut to shape, removing the soft ends of the naturally growing hair, so they poked and scratched my face and irritated my skin.

My main focus is always about top notch products with construction integrity so as not to disappoint (you) my customers from something that may or may not last. I take pride in offering products with near zero defects and I am not willing to sacrifice the objective of my business by which I strive to provide brand integrity, always. So anything that I decide to make for sale to my customer must hold up to my scrutiny of perfection. Unfortunately, these brushes just didn't make for a good solution for portability.

So my search continues for that perfect solution, ladies, and I will keep you informed as to how things go. I will pursue other venues to see if I cannot find a portable brush system with the level of quality in design with soft bristle application that we all desire.

Happy Weekend! ;~)