Sigma Beauty Essential Brush Kit Review
Happy Friday! If you've been following along for a while, you probably already know that I am no beauty expert. But I am totally in love with the world of beauty, and I enjoy learning as much as I can about it.
I'd say that about half of my beauty education comes from reading about it, and the other half comes from playing with products.
For Christmas this year, I could only pinpoint one thing that I really wanted: a set of makeup brushes.
My mom being the angel that she is went all in and got me the Sigma Beauty Essential Kit of brushes. If you've never heard of Sigma brushes, all you need to know is they're pretty popular in the beauty world.
The Sigma brush set retails for $160 on Nordstrom and contains twelve brushes—seven for your eyes and five for your face. This comes out to about $13 per brush which is not too bad if you’re just starting out.
As I mentioned, I got them for Christmas so I've been using them for a few months so now I have a pretty good idea about how they work. Let me walk you through what each of them is used for:
Eye Brushes
E05 Eye Liner: This brush as a tiny point at the top that is perfect for making eye shadow look eye liner-like (think more liquid than kohl).
E30 - Pencil: This brush is pretty appropriately named. It applies eye shadow in the thickness of a kohl eye liner pencil.
E40 - Tapered Blending: This brush is used to blend colors together or apply a transitional color between two more contrasting colors.
E55 - Eye Shading: This brush has a half moon shape and is perfect for applying all-over colors evenly to the lids.
E60 - Large Shader: A bigger version of the E55 that allows for a bit more blending at the edges.
E65 - Small Angle: Man, they really mean small, this brush is teeny! The best way I can describe this is as a brush that comes with a gel eye liner kit.
E70 - Medium Angled Shading: This one is angled so you can add more dimension to base shades by layering on ones that are slightly darker along the crease.
Face Brushes
F30 - Large Powder: I love how these names tell it like it is! This is a big 'ole powder brush, simple as that.
F40 - Large Angled Contour: This brush is used for contouring, highlighting, and applying blush.
F50 - Duo Fibre: Otherwise known as the brush that you can't help but touch the top of in Sephora. This brush has two types of fibres to make the application of powder smoother.
F60 - Foundation: For those of you who use liquid foundation, this is what you use to put the foundation on your face.
F70 - Concealer: The smallest of the face brushes, used to apply concealer to small areas on your face.
My Favorites
So now that we've gotten through the basics of what all of the brushes are, let's really get into it: There's no denying that the quality of these brushes is awesome. And there are occasions where I find myself reaching for every one of these brushes, but it's just not the case for my everyday uses. Here are the five stand-out brushes from this kit that I am truly obsessed with and cannot live without:
E40 - Tapered Blending
E60 - Large Shader
E70 - Medium Angled Shading
F30 - Large Powder
F40 - Large Angled Contour
The E40 Tapered Blending is by far my favorite brush in the kit. It makes my amateur application skills look actually awesome because of the way it magically blends colors together.
Close seconds are the E70 Medium Angled Shading and the E60 Large Shader—both have become crucial in the daily task of putting on eye shadow. I really don't use too many brushes for my face.
I apply concealer and BB cream by hand, but I'm happy to have them on hand for occasions where I want heavier makeup like birthdays, major photo shoots, family events.
I use the F40 Large Angled Contour blush to apply a medium shade to the hollows of my cheeks to contour and then use the F30 Large Powder brush to blend it out and to apply finishing powder to make sure a look stays together.
THe Verdict
Here's the thing: I know I'll have these brushes for years and even the ones that I don't use now in my day-to-day are awesome to have on hand for special events and moments when I really want to play around.
I can't think of a brush that is missing from this kit, except for maybe a brow brush, but I feel like that's a slightly different category.
Plus, I don't think I can cheat on Boy Brow. I think this is a great kit for someone who really wants a set of high quality brushes. That said, if you're just looking to update a powder brush here or a blending brush here, I think that you'd be better off investing in the individual brushes that you think will really make your makeup collection awesome.
You can shop the whole kit below:
Oh, and one last thing...I haven't cleaned these since I got them. Does anyone have a good brush cleaner that they can recommend?? I hope you enjoyed this Sigma Essential brush kit review!
yours,
Austen