A different sort of Ink Blending Brush

Some of you may have seen the hype around the Picket Fence Life Changing Brushes- and from the name they clearly think they're going to be the best thing since sliced bread.
 I did see them demoed by Jennifer McGuire in a video recently, and they seemed to do a great job of soft blending. But the price is Eye watering!

That equates to roughly £40 over here, and I don't think they are actually available in the UK yet.
 However, I came across a thread about them on SCS- Splitcoast Stampers- in which a number of people said they were no different from the sets of Professional Make Up Brushes you could get on Amazon & E-bay for a few quid. The pic top left is of the actual PF brushes. This pic is my set of Make Up Brushes ordered off E-Bay.
Similar much?
 So, in the interests of saving you money, I decided to give them a go. My set cost me £7.99 but when I went to get a link for you, I see they've gone up to £12.99, and I only ordered mine last Friday. Interestingly, some of the American ladies were saying they had seen just this happening, as sellers had obviously realised that crafters were jumping on them smartish.
 The link I have given goes to the search results page, and if you scroll down a little, there are still a lot on offer around the same price I paid. And the few sets on Amazon are a lot more expensive.
 So, quality.
 They are a really super-soft brush, and feel very smooth. There is a wide selection of sizes, from a very small round one you get two of, up to a quite large round one.So 7 in this shape, as you get two of the smallest.

You also get three sizes of a thin, narrow brush too- I can see that being really useful if you wanted to apply colour into a narrow space.

I have to say that in trying them out, I didn't get any problem at all with shedding hairs. Not one.
 The handles are a nice soft black rubber feel where you hold it, and I have to be totally honest and say the rest of the plastic handle does seem as though it could break easily with too much pressure, but as you will see, that actually shouldn't happen.

Now I'll show you my trial and error, along with the results. At first I could only get a blotchy application. I dabbed the second largest brush on my Distress Inkpad, and dabbed it off on the glass mat first, then started in from the edge. As you can see I got quite a lot of ink at the edge, before it started to fade out. But I will say the fading out goes on for a long time, putting a very pale coat on the cardstock.

So I moved around the cardstock, getting very similar results, and I'm starting to think these are not going to do the job at all. I could get really light applications, but not right from the start.

Here I've flipped the cardstock over, and tried again. This time with way more success, as I realised the secret to these is to hold the black part of the handle in your fingers, and to not put any pressure on the head of the brush. Which means it shouldn't snap.
 I'd been applying pressure by sort of leaning onto the brush part.

This time using Oxides, and I got a lovely pale, smooth application of colour.

Switching over to red.
It has been said that all you need to do to clean the ink off is to wipe them over a Microfibre cloth, but to be honest, I found that still left some ink behind. I think you probably need to scrub them back & forth over one, rather than just wipe.

Also, you can wash them out after use.




Here I was trying out the very small round brush, and one of the narrow ones.

 
I think the small round would be good for 'spot' addition of ink. Like if you'd white heat embossed a snowflake, say, and wanted to highlight it with some blue ink.
 Very easy to get narrow streaks of colour with the thinner brush. Again, it starts out really pale, but you can build up the colour.

To sum up, these actually do a really good job of applying an extremely light coat of ink. If that's something you want to do, and struggle with sponges/regular brushes, these may well be worth a try. The most important bit to remember is to use only the lightest touch, no pressure on or towards the brush end. That will only get you a heavy application of ink, and I'm pretty sure snap the handle.