Padawan Problem: Hard Brushes?

I think the idea of this "Padawan Problem" segment is to detail how I overcame these problems, what I found out and what I learnt along the way. I think it might also be great for you, beautiful readers, wherever you may be, to laugh at/with me! Trust me, I do. A lot.

Being a Beauty Padawan, it's inevitable that I would come up against hurdles which would seem like something of a no-brainer to other people. One of these was when I bought some brushes from Mecca Cosmetica a little while ago and discovered upon opening that the bristles were rock hard! I am not even kidding, they looked as though they'd been coated in some kind of lacquer -- that's what I feel like I want to say, anyway. I didn't take any pictures of these brushes, but I did later get a couple more brushes from Mecca as a gift and I took pictures of them.

The same kind of brush. One is rock-hard, the other super-soft. What is this voodoo?

I want to blend with this thing, not stab my eye.

Understandably, I freaked out because I could've sworn that the brushes they had on display were soft, so what did I do? Of course, I went straight to Danielle (I know I talk about her pretty much all the time, but... she's my Yoda) and asked her for help.

Q: I bought three brushes today from Mecca: an eyeliner brush (the kind that looks like a shader brush?), an eye contour brush and a nice big fluffy powder brush. The powder brush is fine, but the other two are hard as rock. I swear to the heavens that the "sample" brushes I touched were soft. Who do I do? Am I supposed to wash them to make them soft? Are they supposed to be hard?

A: The eyeliner brush might be hard because it's supposed to be hard, cuz you don't want a flimsy brush for liner. But no, they shouldn't be hard like that! If you want to keep them, you can try using a hair conditioner on them and it might help. That's what I did with my mom's brushes that hadn't been cleaned in literally years so they were like tumbleweeds. 

You can learn two things from this: the first being that when I'm not sure about what I'm doing, I panic and ask a hundred questions and use embarrassing phrases like "swear to the heavens". (Why, Sarah? Why do you do that to yourself?) The second is that Danielle is full of everyday wisdom!

There are about fifty bottles of conditioner in my bathroom (because who finishes conditioner the same time as shampoo? No one.) and everyone's always talking about you shouldn't use certain shampoos and conditioners because of the ingredients in them. I didn't know which one would be best or worst, so I decided that I wouldn't take the gamble. What I ended up doing was spritzing a little of Mecca's Brush With Success Cosmetic Brush Cleaner on the brushes, because... I just can't see why it wouldn't be safe to use.

And it did the trick! I left them overnight and they'd softened right up. The liner brush is still stiff, as it should be, but it's no longer so hard that I could use it to cut a sandwich. I'm very pleased with the brushes (which you can find here | here | also here), especially the ones for contouring (although I'm still learning how to use them!). I've only used the blending brush once or twice, and the liner brush I broke out for the first time for the John Mayer concert that I went to last week!

In fact, here's a funny story: I bought the liner brush thinking it was a short shader brush. Yup. Sarah, you idiot.

You can't get mad at me if I post a picture of my kitten, right?

Did you have run into any hurdles when you first started out with makeup?

Sarah xo