beautyblender blendercleanser Solid Sponge Cleaner Review

Saturday, April 26, 2014

So I've read a number of favorable reviews of the beautyblender blendercleanser Solid Soap and really wanted to try it out. Though I've been able to get my beauty sponges reasonably clean with cleansing oil and Dr. Bronner's Liquid Soap, they haven't quite been brand new clean. I don't want decently clean, I want miraculously clean.

You get a 1 oz. puck of soap for $15.95. The twist off jar contains a slotted insert to help keep the soap from turning into a soupy mess. The soap lathers very nicely and has a faint eucalyptus scent.

If you've used a beauty sponge before, whether it be the beautyblender brand or any other so called dupe, I think you might agree that it can be difficult to keep pristine. Excess effort does not necessarily equal extra clean as scrubbing too hard can tear the soft sponge. Here's what my sponge looks like after I have used it to blend contour and highlight:

I usually use Dr Bronner's Liquid Pure Castille Soap (Peppermint). It contains:

Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Palm Oil, Sodium Hydroxide*, Water, Mentha Arvensis, Organic Olive Oil*, Organic fairDeal Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Organic Peppermint Oil*, Sea Salt, Citric Acid, Tocopherol

* indicates ingredients that disappear during the soap making process. There's no lye in there, don't worry.

Here's what my sponge looks like after a thorough wash with Dr. Bronner's Magic Liquid Castille Soap:

While most of the foundation has been removed, you can still see a bit of faint staining.

Here's how this same sponge looks cleaned with the blendercleanser Solid Sponge Cleaner (after getting it dirty again).

I was surprised by how much foundation came out during this wash from the center of the sponge. It really is incredibly clean.

Though Dr. Bronner's soap has similar ingredients, it's not actually the same. Here's the beautyblender blender Cleanser ingredients:

Sodium Palmate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Water, Gylcerin, Coconut acid,Titanium Dioxide, Palmitic Acid, fragrance, Sodium Chloride, Tetraspdoi, EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice Powder

Now it works great at getting soap out of not only sponges, but brushes too but doesn't quite fit my brush washing style (I like to fill a bowl with lukewarm water and dissolve a few drops of sulfate free shampoo and wash that bristles that way, rather than lather each brush by hand against a puck). The thing is while I agree that the beautyblender beautycleanser Solid Cleanser works better than liquid Dr Bronner's, I don't think that it is that much different than many bar soaps available, particularly the hand crafted variety. I first sort of accidentally discovered how good bar soap was for cleaning sponges when I was on a trip and had to resort to using soap to clean my sponge. If I remember correctly, it was some Bath & Body Works bar soap, it left my sponge cleaner than its ever been. Since then I've kept a bar around for this purpose, preferring the artisan kind (like the kind sold at farmer's markets or on Etsy. I like non scented and non colored ones but heck, I've found that even Dove White Moisturizing Cream Bar cleans sponges very, very well).

While I'll happily use up this puck, I don't think I'll be repurchasing. There is irony perhaps in how much I'll spend on brushes but consider $16 to be steep for an ounce of soap. If its performance wasn't similar to palm oil and palm kernel oil based shave soaps and artisan crafted soaps, I would be happy to shell out that much but I think that you can easily get 3 (or more ounces) for less than the cost of the beautycleanser Solid Sponge Cleaner.

The beautyblender beautycleanser Solid Sponge Cleaner is $15.95.

What's your favorite brush cleaner? Someday I should throw up a whole new updated brush washing post since I wash my brushes in a completely different manner than I did when I first started this blog.

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