Saturday, July 23, 2016

Fude/Brush Maintenance

An essential part of brushes is taking care of them. Natural hair brushes, especially squirrel must be handled more delicately than synthetic ones.

Brush tree for storing and drying
There are many ways to dry brushes, but the best way I've found is through a brush tree with the brushes upside down in a shady place. Please note that I don't actually dry or store my brushes in the bathroom. You don't want to do that as bathrooms are moist.
You can also use the tree to store your brushes for use like I did with the Hakuhodo S104. This is just an example, I don't actually do both at the same time.
I love this brush tree so much I bought a rectangular version as a backup :) You can purchase them from the Benjabelle website, but I just bought mine from Aliexpress for around $5-$6. I recommend the brand Ovonni, although it looks like the price went up recently so feel free to search and purchase the one within your budget. Amazon is now selling the Ovonni brush tree for $10.99 and offers prime if you don't like waiting for it to be delivered from China.



Soap
I am using generic mildly scented baby shampoo for most of my brushes and it has worked fine. You want something gentle and not too scented (unscented is the best). When baby shampoo doesn't make my white goat brushes completely white or if I want to do some bacterial cleaning, I would go in with the Dr. Bronner's Hemp & Tea Tree bar soap first, then do a second cleanse with baby shampoo to soften it. The Dr. Bronner's soap is drying, so I don't recommend it and wouldn't repurchase. 

I just tried my olive oil savon de marseille soap on two undyed goat brushes: Koyudo fu-pa07p and Koyomo Nadeshiko powder. It indeed made them very white and the fupa feels the same as before, however, it made the Koyomo feel squeaky clean, which was a bad indicator for me. Squeaky clean = drier. It does feel drier when used on the face ): It also broke me out so I definitely do not recommend it!




How long until I have to wash them?
According to Hakuhodo and Chikuhodo, powder and foundation brushes are to be washed once to twice a month. Once a month for powder and up to twice a month for liquid foundation. This applies for goat hair only as it is resilient and can handle the numerous washings. Horse, weasel and badger hair can also take the numerous washings. You can wash the eyeshadow brushes made out of all four types of hair once to twice a month as well. Squirrel hair on the other hand is very delicate and fragile, so you will want to avoid washing them as often as possible. Think the exact opposite for washing squirrel hair: once to twice a year. I know, this sounds crazy and gross, but the more you wash the hair, the more prone they are to breaking and splitting. Also, they won't get gross if you properly wipe them off after each use onto a kleenex or soft cloth.
As for the actual washing process, I use lukewarm-warm water under the faucet while trying to avoid the ferrule. After it's been properly washed, I gently squeeze the bristles and try to reshape them into the original shape and then hang on the brush tree. I check on them every couple of hours and reshape them with my fingers to ensure they've dried in the correct shape.

Brush guards
After drying, I put brush guards over the fude to reshape into its original shape if it dried weirdly. You can leave the brush guards over the fude for a day and it'll reshape nicely. Doing this after it has been dried is better since the bristles are completely dry before being covered by the guard. I don't recommend using napkins/tissue to cover the fude while it's drying as that will extend the drying time and can cause the glue in the ferrule to loosen over time.


Daily maintenance
For daily maintenance after using the brushes, I wipe them on a microfiber cloth soft cloth. It will get pretty dirty, but to me it's better than wiping on a kleenex and wasting paper continuously.



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