Amazing dupe for the Beauty Blender

Now for something a little different.  Foundation application can be a trixy business.  Too heavy an application can give you a masky fake look, too sparing an application can leave you splotchy looking.  The best foundation can suffer from poor application and with the right tools, a cakey looking foundation that clings to your dry spots can suddenly be transformed in an amazing real skin gorgeousness that blurs every flaw.

I've tried about every single method of applying foundation out there short of troweling it on like spackle.  That's next week.    My favorite for most liquid foundations is with a moistened Beauty Blender.  You wet the sponge, wring it out well so it's damp but not dripping, then dab it into your foundation and bounce it all over your face.  It gives the perfect amount of foundation and blends it out so well that it is UNREAL.  The only drawback to the Beauty Blender is that it's freakin' expensive.  One of these babies at Sephora is $19.99.  Twenty bucks!  And since it's a sponge, they are hard to thoroughly clean so you need to be changing them out every so often.  I'd say once every 3 months or so.  That shit adds up.

So being the cheap product whore that I am - I was on a mission to find a good dup for my holy grail Beauty Blender.  I've looked high and low, tried drugstore brands, brands from China via Ebay - you name it - they all were crap.  The imitators all had the same problem.  They were too dense.  When you wet a Beauty Blender - it expands to nearly double the size, and is easily squishable between your fingers.  These barely changed in size when wet and just did not perform anywhere as well as the original.  This made me a sad panda.

Recently I came upon the dup from Real Techniques at Ulta.  I love the brushes that come from Samantha Chapman's line and I was really excited about what she came up with in the beauty sponge space.  The Real Techniques Miracle Complexion Sponge sells for $5.99 - not much more than the drugstore version.  I had to try it out of course.

This sponge is a tear drop shape with one edge having a slanted flat edge and it tapers down to a point on the other end. The pointy side is great for blending under eye concealer and around the nose.

Wet sponge squish test

The texture of this sponge feels EXACTLY the same as the Beauty Blender and it behaves the same way when wet.  You can see how much it increases in size below.

Difference in size when wet

It applies foundation just as well and I'm amazed that such an affordable alternative is available finally after much searching.    If you love your Beauty Blender - you need to try this out.  And if you've never used a Beauty Blender - you should try this first.  Amazing!

GRADE:            A+

Performance:      A

Price:                  A

Availability:        A