Review (3/5): Sensitive Girl Approved. Not perfect but overall okay!
Excellent set of brushes with pretty good quality.
#1 rule when buying Bella and bear products: get on their email list for discount codes! I paid a little more than half of the current price for this set. Even at full price it's a good value (price per brush) but due to a few quirks I recommend not paying full price.
I'm a makeup junkie and own many brushes ranging from handmade very expensive Japanese brushes to easily accessible drug-store brand sets. I prefer synthetic brushes due to allergies and skin sensitives and I believe most of these are synthetic or blends.
The set arrived from Amazon in a very nice giftable thick sturdy box. I'm actually using the box and lid as liners in one of my makeup drawers.
I have broken down this review into two sections brushes and the case.
Brushes:
Handles are semi-matte black and the ferules are silver metal and appear to be crimped on which is very nice. The handles/ferules remind me of IT Cosmetics brushes. They are very well made, heavier constructed, and feature the company and brush name stamped on them.
Brush quality is good over all. Except for one of the brushes, they are all very soft and the density is appropriate for the applications.
Foundation, stippling, large shadow, and smudge shadow brushes are not evenly cut. There is noticeable uneven brush hairs with all 4 of these. The application with these particular brushes is okay but it's not as smooth as it would be with perfectly cut brushes.
The flat yellow brush is made of a taklon or nylon type material. It's large, thick, flat, and useless. It doesn't work with any kind of makeup in any kind of application because as soon as it touches skin, it splays, or splits. It's not flexible or functional. I have put it aside for craft applications, as it might work to pat on glue or something like that.
MY favorite brushes are the white shadow blending blushes, they work very well for blending shadow lines.
Runners up are the larger powder brushes for setting powder and bronzer/blush applications.
Even with the damage to the portfolio, some brushes are not cut properly, and one is useless, this is still an excellent value.
3-3.5 stars because the handle quality is really 4 star quality and most of the brushes are 4-5 star quality but there are some misses here too.
No issues with irritations or sensitivity which is very important to me.
Portfolio:
My large heavy portfolio arrived in fair condition. The zipper, doesn't work properly, and after opening I can't easily zip it again it. This is not a big deal for me because I will not be regularly using my brushes in this case. There was a pamphlet in the bottom of the box with brush descriptions and it made a permanent indentation in the case, which would be unfortunate if I was going to use the case for storage.
The larger brushes all came with mesh brush guards, the smaller brushes were wrapped in plastic.