Loew-Cornell Spot Detailer Brush: Best Brush for Gel Eyeliner

Hello my lovely ladies,

It's Friday and I am excited, although spring break is almost over. The weather has been very nice and warm lately and I hope to get to the beach this weekend, if possible. As we all know, I have a weak spot for brushes and the ones I use mostly come from craft stores instead of makeup counters. I find them working as good as the later versions but a whole lot cheaper. As they are used in different types of medium (oil, water color, acrylic, etc), artist brushes are built to last. The one brand that stands out among the artist brushes is Loew-Cornell and I have a lot of them to apply makeup. While most makeup brushes can be found in your arts store, some of them actually originated from there as well. The spot detailer brush that I am going to show you is one example and yes, you can save your pretty dollars and get an artist brush instead.

Top-bottom: spot detailer brush and regular ultra round brush
Image from Fur and Feathers Woodcarving

Normally, I line my eyes with a slanted taklon brush like this one from Coastal Scents or MAC 266. While the previous one gives me a thick line à la Amy Winehouse, the later one is too flimsy to even line my eyes properly. Using gel eyeliner is not even a technique, it is an art! While the end result is crisp and nice-looking, the process is too painful to master. Believe me, most times makeup artists prefer the regular pencil liner over the gel ones. It is very easy to mess up the gel liner application and once you make a mistake, it is very hard to correct.

After spending so many days (and nights) antagonizing over my less than perfect gel liner application skill, I finally came to a conclusion: it's not me, it's the brush that I used! So one day when I walked around Michael's and saw that spot detailer brush I showed above, I got this "aha moment" that Oprah talked about!

Seriously, this brush is the perfect fit for lining my eyes!

You may think I'm kidding but it makes a whole lot of sense to me after seeing the brush. The one and only reason I mess up with gel liner is I do not see what I am doing when a brush looks like it's about to poke my eyeball out! However, the dental pick shape of the spot detailer brush allows me to gauge the process and I do not feel like being tortured anymore. The bristles are soft and dense enough to give me a smooth and fine line. My eyes actually look a lot like Angelina Jolie's instead of Amy Winehouse's when using this brush to make a cat-eye look.

The proof: Coastal Scents taklon liner brush makes a dark and chunky line (top) while my new love, the L-C spot detailer brush makes a soft line (bottom)

Also, the spot detailer brush (or the tight liner brush) only holds enough material to make a short line. Therefore, you need to reload your brush and continue. That way you actually make less mistakes while lining your eyes.

Price: $4.99 at Michael's and you can always find a coupon online.

My rating: A+, go get it!

Actually, Sonia Kashuk used to have a similar brush for a while but all of the sudden it disappeared. Either it did not sell very well or Ms. Sonia K decided to axe it from the line up for something better, this type of brush is very good to use as a liner brush.

My brush collection in a jar

This is when I know I have a problem, y'all! That jar is not big enough! Anyways, I'm going to show you what I have so far when we come back next week, ok?

I hope you'll have a nice weekend. Enjoy the weather and stay gorgeous!

Love,
Your Makeup Blogger

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