Review: LightInTheBox.com Makeup Brushes (and many random side-notes)

Hey...you! How's life?
Here it is: my first product review. I chose to review some makeup brushes that I ordered from Light In the Box (LightInTheBox.com). This a website based in China, and ships from China! But some of their stuff is super cheap, so I decided to give them a try.

Also, before I go further with the review, I'm not sure if you guys know about it, but I've recently discovered this wonderful site called Ebates.ca (there's also an Ebates.com for you USA folks). Many of you probably already know about these types of sites, but I've apparently been living under a rock for several years... But anyway, for those who don't know, if you sign up with Ebates, there are several websites connected to them, and if you shop from their websites by going through Ebates FIRST, they give you a percentage back from your purchase. Different stores offer different percentages back. Examples: Sephora.ca offers 4 to 8% cash back, depending on the time of year. There's also amazon.ca and chapters.ca giving a percentage back on certain items. So...in trying unsuccessfully to make a long story short, LightInTheBox.com (or LITB, as I will call it from now on) gives 6% cash back by going through Ebates.ca, which is what led me to their site in the first place! Also, if you doubt the legitimacy of their site, Ebates has already sent me a cheque for a whopping $3.52! lol.
NOTE: there's many sites similar to Ebates (another okay one is GreatCanadianRebates.ca), so look around on the interwebz and see what you can find and which site has stores that best suit your needs.


Okay, I'm gonna be totally honest with you guys, since that's the whole point of this blog, but before ordering from LITB, I looked up reviews on them like a mo' fo', and it was mostly negative. But, me being the risk-taker that I am (ha!) decided "what the hell...", and I just went for it.

Most of the reviews I read about LITB were complaints about not receiving items, or receiving poor quality items. There was also a lot of people claiming that the reviews of products on the LITB website itself were written by people who work for LITB, and give all the products 5 star ratings (which, after looking at the site, one might believe this).

Okay, FINALLY getting to the actual product review! yay!
I chose the 18 piece Professional Makeup Brushes with Free Leather Pouch found here.
If you're buying from this site, you can disregard most of their "2 day sales" or "50% off" type deals...it's just a gimmick. Their stuff is always the same price!

So I got this set for $13.99 USD. Another note: Since the Canadian dollar has been pretty strong these days, it was better for me to be charged in USD on my credit card, rather than have LITB convert to CAD, since their exchange rates are a bit wonky. They give FREE shipping on this item, meaning it takes 10-20 business days to arrive, but I paid $1.99 USD for insurance (since the reviews made me paranoid that I wouldn't receive my item! and I guess it's coming a LONG way from China). I ordered it on December 6th and received it in the mail on January 7th. So, not too bad for shipping, since I expected it to take about a month.

One more thing: for Canadians buying from LITB (or anywhere shipping from outside Canada) In case you didn't know, if you buy something worth more than $20.00 CAD, there is the possibility that Customs with charge you duty. They also charge something like an $8.75 processing fee on top of that! So you may think you're getting a good deal, but make sure you account for the extra charges before ordering!

Okay, wow..this is turning into the longest review EVER. Sorry, people! I promise other reviews won't be this long! I think I'm just excited and rambling since this is my first!
Alright! Here is a picture of the brushes: from their website:

And here's a picture of what I was sent (yes, FINALLY!):

I decided to put a pen next to the "free leather pouch" for scale. It could be real leather...but I can't really tell, and if it isn't, it's not a big deal.










Here's the set..almost fully opened! It has the nice flap to cover the brushes, but the pouch is already huge, and having the extra bit of flap, is just more pouch to get in the way and knock things over.

Alright, here's the whole set! The first 7 brushes (starting at the right side) are natural haired bristles, the rest are all synthetic nylon brushes.

The set actually seems pretty similar to the website photo. Now..I'm sorry, but I have another little ramble. I don't own many makeup brushes (which is why I purchased the LITB set). The only other set I had at the time was an Ecotools set and a set I got from Sephora on sale for $15.00. When I got them, you people will think I'm disgusting, but I didn't wash them. I just used them straight out of the packages. To be honest, it didn't even occur to me that I should wash them before using. HOWEVER, with these brushes, I figured it wouldn't hurt to give them a little wash first, since they came a long way, and BOY, was I glad I did!
Sorry I don't have a picture, but all I did was take a little squirt of liquid sop on my hand, and rubbed/swirled the bristles around for a couple seconds...or at least I thought it would only be for a couple seconds, until I saw that the soap was turning black..like literally black! AND some black crummy bits were coming out, possibly paint bits from the brush handles, or metal bits from the ferrules, or something entirely different, I can't really say. So..yeah..from now on I'll be washing makeup brushes before I use them!

As I said before, this set comes with both natural and synthetic haired brushes. The natural haired ones (from goats and one from ponies, according to their site) were the worst for having crud in them, but also for having bristles fall out. One in particular...the bigger fluffy brush (as I like to call it) is the worst, and when I use it, the hairs fall out and get in my eye or stick to my face. Super annoying! Actually, I think it might be the pony-haired brush..but I can't really tell.

Actually, I have only used the big brushes once, and before I took this photo I decided to tug on the bristles a bit, and you can see how many hairs have fallen out.

The synthetic brushes, however, are pretty good. They're a lot stiffer than the other brushes I own, which I've found is actually better for picking up some of my lower quality shadows and packing it on the eyelid. I also really like the angled liner brush, which is stiffer than my other ones, making it easier to get close to the lash line without smearing stuff all over. Yes, I told you I'm new to the whole makeup thing!

Overall, you get a pretty good variety of brush sizes, but not necessarily of different brush head-types, if that makes sense? The natural brushes are pretty soft, but they are bad for losing bristles. The larger brushes also come with these plastic covers to keep the shape of the bristles, but they fall down a lot, so I'm not sure if I'll keep them on. I'll probably just tuck them down into the pockets when they really start to annoy me.The handles are nice and long, though, and the pouch is both good and bad, depending on my mood. It's nice to have, but it's HUGE when you roll it out, so I keep the brushes I use most often in a separate box.

So..would I recommend these brushes? Probably not. The quality just isn't that great, and half of the brushes I'll probably never use, like the sponge applicator thing and the spoolie mascara thing. If you live in the USA, lucky you, because you have ELF brushes for like $1.00, which are probably as good as these. Although, SOMETIMES we can find ELF brushes up here in Canada at Dollarama stores for $1.50 or so. I also found some nice brushes at Real Canadian Superstore for $4.94 on sale after Christmas. It was a set of 5 Joe Fresh double-ended brushes with teal coloured bristles. I actually really love these brushes, but not sure if they'll sell them again.

At the same time I got the Joe Fresh brushes, Superstore had a random bin of ELF makeup sets, so I picked up a couple palettes (which I will probably review later if the palettes are still available on their website). It was really odd, since they don't sell ELF here...unless they're starting to? However, I haven't seen any random ELF bins since, and probably won't until Target opens up in Canada!?

Back to brushes: Ecotools are pretty good quality and are reasonably priced if you don't want to spend a ton of money as a beginner. So I'd recommend those, rather than this set from LightInTheBox.com.


Summary:
Pros: relatively cheap, lots of brush sizes, fancy pouch
Cons: too many falling bristles from natural hair brushes, lots of brushes I won't use, long shipping time

Okay! So if you made it to the end of this review THANK YOU SO MUCH for reading!! I hope it was helpful!

If you have brushes to recommend or want to say anything else, please leave a comment!

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