You'd Better Sit Down For This

Brace yourself.

I think I've found eye brushes which I like more than their MAC equivalent.

Some mysterious new high-end discovery? Not hardly, they cost one third/one quarter of a MAC brush each and are lurking in your local grotty Superdrug.

More Brushes = Less Washing.

Incidentally, the same philosophy applies to dishes, socks, bed linen, etc.

I love to use a lot of bright colours on my eyes. Consequently, I'm continually wiping off my trusty MAC 239 brush. The MAC 239 is a commonly used flat eyeshadow shader brush, they're shaped to pack eyeshadow onto the lid for dense coverage and rich pigmentation. I've been on an informal mission lately to find cheaper dupes of the brush, so that I can buy, say, five hundred of them, and just have a separate one for each colour.

I've also been on the search for a much thinner blending brush than my MAC 217. The 217 is stiff with short, domed bristles, perfect for tight blending, but it's quite big. Upon advice I bought the MAC 224 for tighter blending - and regret it. It's tapered, yes, but it's also fuggin' huge, much wider and longer than my 217, less dense so it flicks eyeshadow all over my eye. Not precise at all.

I didn't realise what I actually wanted was probably the MAC 219. I've yet to try the actual MAC 219, but I think I've found a dupe of it from pictures. I can't be sure, although either way, I LOVE this new brush discovery. We're talking holy grail territory.

GOSH! What are these amazing brushes?

Yup. Danish cosmetics company GOSH which I haven't previously been blown away by (I bought their duo-fiber stippling brush (dupe for MAC 187 and it sheds continually and annoys me), I thought they were pretty good - nice eyeliners - but wasn't amazed. On a whim, I saw they had a 3-for-2 on, so I decided to check out the eye brushes.

As is the case with almost every Superdrug I've been in, their display is ridiculously messy and dirty. Some/most of the testers are missing, or in the wrong place. Nothing is tidied or put back into its proper place, so it can be quite tricky to work out how the brush in your hand corresponds with the tester, particularly as I think they're machine-made, so there are slight differences from brush to brush. Most of this isn't GOSH's fault, though. Still, I wish Boots stocked them, I hate shopping at Superdrug.

Since they were 3-for-2, I bought 1 Flat Eyeshadow brush (similar to MAC 239) and 2 Round Eyeshadow brushes (possibly similar to MAC 219?) and absolutely love them. I prefer the flat brush to my 239 - it's exactly the same shape, height and density, but more attractive (matte black handle, black ferrule), easier to clean (no staining) and a little bit softer. I can't compare the round brush to its MAC equivalent but I can say that it's fantastic, I love it for really precise blending in the crease or across the upper/lower lashline, precise highlighting, precise blending anywhere or working with a great many colours in a short space.

These two eye brushes are definitely my favourite eye brushes now. I reach for my flat GOSH brush over my MAC 239 everyday, it manages to be as stiff and dense but just feels softer on the lid, and it's much easier to clean. I know that sounds weird, I hadn't previously considered 'cleanability' as an asset or even quality in brushes, but for some reason, they are.

I'll be posting a review of these brushes right after this (I'm separating them so the review won't be so long-winded), so watch this space! Or, rather, the space a bit above this one, or just bash F5 repeatedly.