Anyways, on to the review and those comparison photos:
Without Brush Roll: $79 (Black)
With Brush Roll: $99 (Black/Light Pink)
The kit includes 12 brushes (5 face & 7 eyes). The brushes are of either natural or synthetic bristles and are generally soft to touch and skin. The brushes are made of a metal (not sure what kind exactly) ferule and a nice matte satin finish black wooden handle with the Sigma logo and brush name & number imprinted on it.
If you have been following me on Twitter, you would have probably seen my TwitPic of the packaging and the brushes when I first got them. The packaging is just gorgeous. The brushes and brush roll were packed in an organza drawstring pouch. The one thing that I noticed off the bat was the smell. I think it's the mix of the faux leather scent and the glue that created this really strong awful scent. Good thing it only needed to be aired out a day or two to get rid of the stench.
The brush roll (Ind. Price: $20) is nice and has 12 main pockets to store the 12 brushes in the kit and it comes with a protective flap over the brushes. Then there are the 3 additional brush pockets to store additional brushes you might have or even lip glosses, concealers, eye liner pencils, mascara, whatever fits. Technically it's more of a brush pouch/fold than it is a roll considering it doesn't actually roll up. The brush roll is held closed with a strap and a magnetic button.
All brushes and brush roll are available for purchase seaprately too.
My go to brush for all over face powder including pressed powder and powder foundation. I found the bristles to be a bit prickly at first especially when I tried pouncing the bristles on my face to apply loose powder to set my foundation. After a few washes with a conditioning baby shampoo, the prickling was rare. Sweeping the brush all over my face however was a pleasant experience from the beginning. I love the density and fluffiness of the bristles which makes it really comfortable on the skin. There was some shedding during the first few washes but I think that's normal. Considering how dense the bristles are packed together, there was bound to be some shedding but nothing alarming mind you. I also experienced color bleeding during my first few washes but that's no longer an occurance.
Here is your regular filbird cut traditional foundation brush with synthetic bristles. The bristles felt soft to touch but felt scratchy on the skin during application. But then again, it could just be the brush that I got and it won't be fair to generalize here. I'm not a big fan of this type of brush for foundation particularly simple because it leaves streak marks and takes a lot longer to blend.
Compared to the essence of beauty Foundation brush, the Sigma F60 is significantly smaller in size, thinner in density and firmer while the former is larger and slightly fluffier. I do think that the essence of beauty one works better for what it's meant to do (at a lesser price too) and blends foundation better on the skin without feeling scratchy.
Fortunately the kit also came with the F50 Duo Fibre brush (a.k.a. large stippling brush) and I definitely prefer to use this brush for foundation application. If you've seen Enkore's video on stippling, you'd already have known of the stipple and swirl (simple foundation application) and the stippling (airbrush finish) method. I didn't find the bristles to be prickly at all and the natural bristles holds the white tips quite well for both application methods in my opinion. The white fibres were dense enough to give a nice even coverage in a relatively short amount of time. This also works great to apply Mineralized Skin Finishes (MSF) and powder/cream blushes. The white tips cleans up very easily but I did find the black bristles to shed quite a bit during washing and application. The shedding has subsided in recent use.
This brush looks like a mini version of the F60 but works a whole lot better. A simple concealer brush that does the job to conceal small areas and blemishes. I do however use the essence of beauty foundation brush to blend out the edges of the concealer. The bristles are flat and doesn't have a lot of give which means that the brush is perfect for packing on color. Apart from conceling, you can use this brush for a more concentrated eye shadow application.
As you can see in the above photo, the F70 side by side with the essence of beauty Concealer brush shows a significant size and length difference between the two. For obvious reasons, the latter is a lot better at covering up a a larger area.
Here's another excellent brush from the kit. I like that this brush is great for applying highlighter, blush and contour shades and blend it in nicely on the skin. As the name suggests, the slanted edge of the bristles help aid contouring application especially since it fits nicely below the cheekbones/hollows of the cheeks. The fibres picks up color well whether it's powder or cream products.
Above I've compared the Sigma F40 to 2 other brushes that I own with similar functions. I love that the F40 is fluffier with a bigger circumference compared to the other 2 brushes. Here the essence of beauty Contour brush although smaller does pretty much the same job as the F40. In terms of bristle softness, they're both relatively the same. The Elianto pink handle angled brush is not dense enough in my opinion and made it harder to blend.
The first eye brush here is the E60 Large Shader, a long bristled eye shading brush that I like to use for all over lid color usually when I'm not using a lot of color layering. Other usages of the brush is for brow bone highlighting if you have a small crease/monolid and large brow bone area. If you like, you can use it to spread your eye shadow primer or for a quick soft blending effect. The tip is slim enough to apply eye shadow on the lower lash line depending on eye shape. As pictured above, the elianto brush is a lot fluffier despite being of similar size and is less tapered. The photo also shows the elianto brush bristles to be less refined shape-wise and I personally find to be scratchy as well.
This flat dome shaped short bristle brush is Sigma's take on the traditional eye shading brush. The bristles are very nicely cut with very smooth lines. The fibres are soft and does not poke on my skin/lids. The brush bristles has a bit more of a fluffy tip which I like to use to blend harsh lines when needed.
The e.l.f. Studio 'C' Brush is also quite similar to the E55 despite it's Taklon bristles and wider size. The E55 has a longer flat side with the bristles tapered towards the tips where as the 'C' Brush is pretty much tapered almost from the base.
The next eye brush is the E70 pictured above which is basically an E55 with a slanted/angled tip. I like this brush because the angled edge helps the brush glide on the contours of the eye area and can be used as an overall eye shadow application: all over lid color, crease color (flipped to horizontal), brow bone color, inner corner highlight (pointed tip), blending. Need I say more?
Again, I found the elianto brush to pale in comparison to the E70 (and even the essence of beauty brush) simple since the bristles are harsher/scratchier. The only difference that I noticed between the E70 and essence of beauty is basically the size and bristles density. Both are nice brushes though.
The kit also offer a blending brush option and that's the E40. The bristles are fluffy and long and a teeny bit coarse. Blends pretty well in my experience although depending on the look I'm going for, the brush does feel a little too big for my eyes. Still, I do like this brush nonetheless. If you're wondering, I didn't experience and shedding or color bleed with this brush.
Next is the E30 which is the pointy pencil brush. Mind you, this brush does get slightly fluffy if not washed and shaped properly. That said, this is the perfect brush to smudge eye liner and if you have a smaller crease like me, it's a good brush to define the outer edge to add depth to the eye look or highlight the inner corner or even to apply color in the hollows of the eyes. Depending on your eye shape, it should work well to place/smudge color on the lower lashline as well. For me, the next brush does the trick.
Despite the name, the E05 didn't quite work as well as I'd like to line my eyes. I couldn't get a perfect smooth line with ease. As you can see in the photo above the bristles has frayed slightly and that makes creating a clean line close to impossible. I've tried reshaping it after washing but haven't succeeded as of yet. I expected the tip to be a lot finer than it is but I found that it works well for me to apply powder eye shadow on my lower lash line. I think that it would be a good brush to use for make up art too.
The E65 I feel is a much better brush for lining the upper lash line with cream/gel liners (or even eye shadows). I love this brush!! I use it to fill in my brows with a brow powder and it makes the most beautiful and natural results (I'll have a video on brows soon). This isn't the brush for me to use on my lower lash line though for lining with cream/gel liners. I found the application a bit too messy for my taste but I don't think it's the brush's fault but rather my natural eye area. It's pretty good with lining/applying color on the lower lash line.
So those are my thoughts on the Sigma Complete Brush Kit. I wanted to do this review a couple months back but I thought I'd use the brushes a bit more so it took awhile since I don't wear a lot of make up on a daily basis. I will be reviewing the Premium & Travel Kit soon.
Hope that gave you another insight on the brushes from this kit. Do you own any Sigma brushes? How was/is your experience using them? Do let me know.
Fantastic review on Sigma brushes! loved it, very indepth. Thanks for sharing xoxo
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading the review. :) You're very much welcomed.
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