I have never been hugely moved by packaging or visual branding. The whole mermaids and unicorns rut that seemed to go on for decades instead of just years barely caught my interest. But apparently, brush handles decorated with stars are my weak spot. (I was also interested in trying more dense, fluffy foundation brushes, so this was The Perfect Thing to pop up while I was browsing Ulta’s site.)

This is, for me, a great foundation buffing brush. It’s comparable to NYX’s Multipurpose Buffing Brush, with a slightly fluffier brush head. I use it to blend my BB cream after I apply it so that it looks flawless: no streaks, no swirls, near-invisible minimized pores. I’ve used and washed the brush over the past two months, once I finally started wearing BB cream again after initially cutting out all makeup in an overabundance of caution once Covid-19 began wreaking its havoc. The brush withstood washing just fine, with no loss of fullness nor bristle fallout.

Photos that show how the product actually performs...! See how I create my swatches

The bracelet has two charms - a silver-plated crescent moon and a copper-plated star - and four tags. The tags are basically branding: one for IT Cosmetics, one that reads “Infused with +Energy Technology”, and two for Alex + Ani. The silver moon was talked up as a selling point: “Rafaelian silver”, which is just a particular silver-plating process named for the founder of Alex + Ani. The bracelet is decent enough, but not something that I’d want to wear with so many “advertising” charms. Additionally, because of their placement on the bracelet, the charms are essentially always under your wrist. I’m thinking that I’ll cut the bracelet so that I can pull the moon and star charms off for re-use somehow, and pitch the rest.

This was the first of the three Alex and Ani brush kits that I saw. I also think that I bought the last ones that Ulta had in stock.

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