Brush It Off

I'll be the first to admit I'm not always consistent when it comes to cleaning my make-up brushes. To be honest, I usually wipe off my eye shadow brushes on my t-shirt in the morning.
While powder brushes don't need to be cleaned every use your other brushes that contain foundation, concealer and liquid liner brushes do. My foundation brush works better dirty oddly enough, but that's no excuse to not clean it! Instead of a thorough clean every time, I quickly run it under hot water until later.
Every week I do a full clean of all my brushes.
If you have higher end brushes you'll want to be extra careful on how you wash them. Cheap brushes are made of synthetic hair, and premium brushes are real hair mostly made from animals. You also want to be careful not to immerse the tips while cleaning because the glue that holds it together could losen.
Here's the best way I've found to wash them:

I use a gentle soap (This one is Method, but I used to use Softsoap as well) and MAC brush cleaner. I run warm water, wet the brush then use a little amount of soap in my palm. I circle the brush in my palm until the color is too dark, then I rinse. Repeat if needed.

 Once it's clean of all make-up I put the brush on a paper towel and drop some MAC cleaner (mostly alcohol) on it and wipe it both ways a couple times. Leave to dry.

Make sure you set the brush back in it's original position while drying.

The Great Debate

I love having color on my nails, but I have a love-hate relationship with polish. I do enjoy how easy (for the most part) it is to quickly change my color, but I can't stand how easily it chips and fades.
Working in the beauty industry I quickly came to love higher end polishes like OPI, Zoya and SpaRitual. The colors are a very wide ranged spectrum, and I get them at a great discount. Don't get me wrong--I have a lot of drug store brands as well. Are they all the same? Well, that depends. My higher end products--OPI, etc do tend to last a little longer, yes. But they sometimes need to be thinned out with nail polish remover as they get really thick. No big deal but kind of annoying. I love the color range on OPI--they've been doing this gig for years and really know how it's done. Plus the names they come up with are awesome! I also personally think they have the best Base and Top coat.
SpaRitual is a great brand as well. They are environmentally conscience company that makes fantastic products. All of their products are Vegan and organic. The colors are also in a wide range, and are quite beautiful. Both OPI and SpaRitual are free of DBP (dibutyl phthalate), formaldehyde and toluene--but drugstore brands still have them in some of theirs.
The one brand I'm always on the fence about is China Glaze. It's supposed to be a higher end polish (sold in beauty depot's , Chatters, etc) but it's soooo not. The colors are INCREDIBLE. When it comes to neons, China Glaze is the front runner for sure. But as soon as it goes on it comes off. The glitters are also fantastic, but have also come off easily. Usually the whole nail in one go...so at least that's easy.
My drug store nail polishes were bought before I knew about the good stuff, in a passing glance, or a quick needed color change. I do love some of them, but for the most part they fall short.
The colors are great, but within hours they chip. A great brand that has been around for years in South Africa and the UK is Essie. It's finally here, and it's a great polish! It actually lasts quite a long time and has a great array of colors but is still under $10. Another of my friends swears by Sally Hansen polish, and I have a couple colors in it as well and have to say they are pretty good, too. So here's my nail polish collection:

One of the best days ever in the beauty world (in my opinion) is when OPI finally wised up and made their gel polish, Axxium. I don't know why it took them so long to come up with, but it was a miracle.
Axxium gel is a perfect OPI color--and I mean PERFECT. You love I'm Not Really A Waitress? They matched it perfectly. When it first came out they didn't have a lot of colors but they are slowly working them all in--including lots of the new and glitter collections. I think they have about 35 colors out. The gel lasts a couple weeks depending on how long it takes for your nails to grow. And the shine lasts the entire time, which is a big deal for me. Essentially they are gel nails, so the downfall to this is ruining your nails. And while OPI says they are "soak off" they really aren't. Again, they are gel nails so they need to be filed down. Not really a big deal in my books for the cost of having gorgeous color that doesn't come off, but some may be turned off. You can get this service done in most nail salons.

OPI's wide range of Axxium Gel colors

Gel has honey-like consistency

Another great product that has recently come about is Shellac. It's a step up from Axxium. It's fundamentally a nail polish with all the bad things gone. It stays on as long as Axxium, it has great colors, it doesn't wreck your nails, and best of all--removal is actually simple! So the service takes less time to do as well.

Shellac

Color on nails is Shellac

If you're getting married or going on vacation somewhere where there will be lots of sand and water and you'll want your nails to look good the entire time, I definitely recommend going for a longer color!
What's your favorite brand(s)?

Quick Tip

Have you ever been in the shower and realize you ran out of shave gel? This happened to me once and I ended up using conditioner. And I never looked back.
Conditioner works just as well as shave gel, and it's WAY cheaper. Especially if you just go to the drugstore and buy a massive no-name bottle. It's creamy and moisturizes the skin just as well!