This month, the Walmart beauty box included gel brush cleaner from Real Techniques from Sam & NIc. I wanted to provide a review of my experience.  Beauty boxes are a great way to experience new, upcoming products and sometimes staple brands. These boxes are delivered to your home monthly with deluxe (large) sample-sizes of a variety of products.  Both Walmart and Target sell their own monthly box subscriptions. You can order a subscription online and have the nominal fee deducted from your credit card each month. You're not just limited to Walmart or Target. There are plenty of other beauty boxes are there for your liking.  

 Real Techniques by Sam & Nic is a gel brush cleaner. The key word here is gel. Gel is seen a lot in beauty products these days from cleaning products to skin care and makeup. I'm not completely of the significance of gel in brush cleansers.  The product does claim to provide a better makeup experience. Take a look at the first photo to see the info provided with the packet.  

So, let's get into my cleaning experience.

For many women, brush cleaning is one of those necessary, yet tedious tasks that is a must if you want to rid your face of breakouts and spreading bacteria from your brushes and makeup to your skin. I find it to be relaxing.  Knowing that I'm doing something great for my brushes and skin is well worth it. While I always clean my personal brushes separately from my professional brushes,  it's just a great feeling to know that both my personal and professional kits are ready once all of my tools are clean. 

The sample provided by Real Techniques by Sam & Nic is very ample. They really wanted to provide potential customers with enough of a sample to decide if you REALLY like the product. That is key because cleaning one brush may not give you enough of an experience to purchase. 

I decided to take photos of the first brush I cleaned using Real Techniques. Unfortunately, I do not have a before pic of the brush but I can tell you that it was definitely stained. The brush pictured here is from IT Cosmetics. I used the blush Sugar Plum, by IT and it stains my brush. It's important to note that even with spray brush cleaner used for spot cleaning, the blush stain color did not come out. The brush was clean but the stain was still there.  So the real test would be to see if this cleaner by Real Techniques would either restore my brush, or if the brush would be permanently stained. 

I used a drop of the cleaner. I have to admit I was a bit heavy-handed with the cleaner because I tore the packet a little too fast so it poured out faster than not. That actually turned out to be a good thing. The cleaner, as you can see from the second image lathers quite a bit. Contrary to popular belief, lather doesn't always equal clean. In this case, however, the brush turned back to its original color. That was a nice thing to see. Use this cleanser sparingly, however, because a little goes a long way. I had to rinse my brush several times to rid it of all the lather. 

Overall, I would recommend a brush cleaner for women who wear makeup on a weekly basis. I can't say that this is a "must-have" cleaner for me even though it did a solid job of cleaning my brushes. They did come out clean and soft. With that being said, if you wear makeup 3 or more times a week, it would be to your benefit to deep clean your brushes using a brush cleaner once a week. Water is  required to effectively clean your brushes. If you don't wear makeup on a regular basis (less than 3 times per week), you are not excluded from purchasing a cleanser. You need clean brushes too! Instead of once a week, you may deep clean every other week. Spot cleaning after each use is also effective.