Day 17: Brush Guard Dupe?

I will preface this by saying that I haven't actually tried the Brush Guard before but I am testing the effectiveness of a cheaper dupe.

So I've been trying out different methods and tips in my search for a way to keep the shape of my brushes. I like DustyOHunter's method of drying brushes, I've been wanting to find a more reusable method of keeping the shape of my brushes.

I google searched for expandable cable organizers based off of several comments left on a video GossMakeupArtist did on Brush Guards and I ordered off of Cableorganizer.com a couple feet of cable organizer in 1/4 and 3/8th inches PET mesh.

*Not really recommending them mostly because I didn't like how much I paid for shipping, for 3 feet of cable organizer (totaling about 75 cents) First class shipping was 4 dollars :(*

I ran into two problems with the organizers.

Firstly, I had problems keeping the wider pieces of mesh from fraying. I tried to kind of melt the ends with a lighter (a trick I picked up from my pointe shoe days) but eh that didn't really work. This trick worked really well with the 1/4 inch pieces.

Secondly, Now the smaller width cable organizers are circular versus the 3/8ths inch cable organizers being relatively oval shaped. This was an issue because the 3/8ths inch size frayed when I tried to shape it into a circle and being oval shaped didn't fit all of my brushes.

Here's how it looks in the sleeve. It did a good job at compressing my 1/4 inch Loew Cornell Maxine Mop brush. It also worked wonders with my MAC 266 SE brush!

Here's a comparison I did of drying my 1/4 inch Loew Cornell brushes, one was in the mesh and the other air dried.

The left was in the mesh sleeve, the right air dried.
The best part? Even after it was used the one that dried in the sleeve kept its shape better than the air dried brush.

The second best part? 1 foot of cable organizer was about 25-30 cents. Use scissors to cut it into the length that you want and I recommend lightly taking a lighter to the ends just to keep it from fraying. If you don't have the brush guards, this is something you should try out!