Can I just say whoever came up with this is a genius. So, so clever, and one of those why didn’t anyone think of this before items? It’s a palm-sized mat of corrugated rubber that you use when you wash your brushes, and it’s a life-changer (well it is if you wash about 500 brushes a week. You know who you are!)
Being a makeup artist, you get to clean brushes. A lot. As in, after every single job. We all have different ways to do it – using soaps or special alcohol cleansers, drying on radiators or in the sun, hanging off the edge of tables and using special organic shampoo or conditioner when you want to give them a bit of extra love. No matter how you do it, it always has to be done, and done well, since dirty brushes are a health hazard, make you want to gag, and as the French say, c’est pas possible.
So anything that makes your brush-washing life easier is PRETTY damn exciting let me tell you, and in hundreds of years of brush washing, nothing has come along to make it easier, apart from armies of assistants.
Basically you whack the Sigma mat in the bottom of the sink, wet your dirty brush and tromp your dirty brush down on it. Give it a 2 second wiggle and it’s clean. I’m not kidding. It leaves your brushes softer, cleaner and speeds up the process by I would say conservatively, about 30%. When you have 200 brushes to wash after a 14 hour day, they are precious seconds that could be spent sleeping! And you can use your usual shampoo or soap concoction on your brushes as normal. The mat has 7 different texture areas on it to get the dirt out of every brush, from synthetic to natural fibres, from big brushes to your tiniest detail or liner brushes.
And if you’re assisting right now and brush washing pretty much IS your life, you need to buy one of these before you finish this post. You can thank me later…
PS Holy crap! It costs $32 which is an awful lot for a piece of rubber. However if you valued out the time you save by shortening your brush washing time, it would quickly pay for itself. Just think of it as a yoga mat for your brushes.
Also strangely the only one I can find online is a large mat, whereas the one I have is a mini and is perfect for cleaning all my brushes. Let me know in the comments please if you find a link to where you can get the mini!
