DIY Makeup Brush Spot Cleanser

In the past few years since I’ve really gotten into makeup, I’ve found several solutions for cheap, DIY makeup brush cleanser. However, I never had a good cheap solution for spot cleansing. After doing a bit of research for different “recipes” I concocted this spot cleanser based on mixture of the ingredients I saw show up most often.

The cleanser I made consists of just 3 ingredients. There were some recipes out there even simpler than this, and plenty with way more ingredients. Personally, I wanted something effective that didn’t require me to buy several different items especially for this project.

The only things you will need for my version is baby shampoo, tea tree oil and rubbing alcohol. They say the higher percentage of alcohol you get the faster it will dry, but I went for the cheapest option and it dries plenty fast for me!

I filled a small spray bottle I found in the travel section of Target. I don’t have exact measurements, but this picture gives you a rough guide of how much of each ingredient I used.

Baby shampoo filled the bottle about 1/5 to 1/4 of the way. The majority of the bottle is rubbing alcohol. I topped it off with tea tree oil. My bottle didn’t come with a dropper, and the first time I made this I poured way too much in. It doesn’t make it not work, it just reeks.

You could definitely get away with just adding several drops of the tea tree oil, as even the small amount seen here still has a pretty strong smell.

You’ll need to give the bottle a good shake each time you use it, as the oil layer will separate out over time.

Of course, the real test is how well it works at getting my makeup brushes clean. Here are a couple of my most used brushes – foundation and blush.

To use, give each brush a couple of spritzes of your spot cleanser, then rub in a circular motion on a towel. I normally use a cloth towel for this, but used a paper towel for the demo so you can see the makeup being removed.

And out comes the makeup!

You can see how much came out in about 10-20 seconds of cleaning. And these were brushes that had been sitting dirty in my brush holder for a while. The nice thing about spot cleaning is you can almost immediately reuse the brush for another color or person because the alcohol makes them dry really quickly.

The only downside to having this quick solution is I don’t feel as bad for going so long between deep cleanings now, which I know I should do more often!

Linking up with: Sugar Bee Crafts, Ginger Snap Crafts, Design Dining and Diapers, Liz Marie Blog, The 36th Avenue, Lil’ Luna