The Beautyblender ($20, Sephora) is the holy grail of makeup sponges.
Sure, it gives your makeup an absolutely flawless finish — but it's not without its problems. It can attract bacteria, it eats a lot of product, and for what looks like a regular sponge, it's a little pricey.
That's probably why every beauty Instagram star and their mom has come up with their own bizarre "replacement" for the neon pink sponge. And by "bizarre," I mean bad. Because, seriously? These household object foundation hacks just don't freaking WORK.
To prove it, I tried to apply my makeup with 8 crazy Beautyblender replacements, and it was a horror show. Oh boy, here we go.
1. A kitchen sponge.
I'll give it to the beauty hackers, this one actually makes sense. You know, since this is actually a sponge.
If you like your face to have that wonderfully chemical dye scent, just go ahead and rub a kitchen sponge all over your face right now.
Because you know what? This foundation doesn't look too bad — I just lost more than half of it in the process.
The main beef the beauty community has with the Beautyblender is it's product absorption, but the kitchen sponge puts it to SHAME in that department.
<p>TL;DR: Good for pans. Bad for face.2. Silicone bra inserts.
Ah, the internet's second-rate replacement for the Silisponge (of which I'm also still skeptical).
You can hear me applying this foundation from a mile away. *slap* *slap* *SLAP*
The amount of force required to make a matte foundation apply evenly gives the phrase "beating that face" a much more literal definition.
And the amount of time it took did NOT pay off. My skin looked dry and flaky, despite my dedication to moisturizer.
Inner corners and creases? Not a chance.
It's OK. But you know what's better? A Beautyblender.
3. Tampons.
I can not make this shit up. Yes, people have used tampons to blend foundation. Don't @ me.
Can you see how excited I am to have this tampon on my face? The ridges are imprinting right back onto my skin.
And it's so damn small, applying foundation to just half of my face took a solid ten minutes.
As a complete surprise to absolutely no one, the tampon was super absorbent. Most of the product got eaten right up, and there was little left for my face.
I thought its small size would be perfect for the areas around my eyes, but I was laughably wrong. It made everything worse.
Way worse. I'm not sure who thought of this hack, but I hope for their sake they've moved on and gone back to their normal sponges that, you know, aren't tampons.
4. A spoon.
In this day and age, I really do think some people just open their kitchen drawers and cabinets, blindly point at things, and say, "that'll do!"
Not going to lie, the cold spoon did feel really good on my face. But I had to rub the product across my face, and my skin was NOT a fan.
The spoon couldn't absorb the product, but a lot of it gathered around the spoon's edges. So once again, I'm left nearly foundation-less.
Instead of settling into my skin, the foundation rested on top of it, and you can tell. Especially around the eye, an area a spoon is entirely incapable of reaching.
Plus, my nightmares now consist of spoons flying close to my face.
5. A Beautyblender covered in cling wrap.
Once again, a seemingly sensible solution to the makeup sponge absorption problem.
I don't feel completely idiotic — a nice feeling post-spoon — but I'm not entirely comfortable, either.
Plastic is just not a good feeling on the face, and the cling wrap increases your application time by minutes because you have to keep pulling it back so you don't crease the foundation.
You can work yourself to a reasonable finish, but it'll take you a damn long time.
The Beautyblender doesn't need your help, cling wrap. Go home.
6. Socks.
I really wish I could tell you why this is a thing. Or why I opted to do this.
The sock absorbed more foundation than every other tool here combined. I was left intently slapping my face with a makeup-caked sock, looking like I'd finally snapped.
Just imagine walking into your bathroom one morning and finding your roommate / S.O. / family member just hitting themselves in the face with a rolled up sock in the name of beauty. There's no coming back from that.
That's how crazy this makes me look and feel.
Sure, the sock can blend what's already there, but it doesn't do much else.
Also, it's a sock. I feel like I shouldn't have to put one on my face to stop others from doing so, but this is the world we live in, OK?
7. Tomatoes.
We stopped opening kitchen cabinet and drawers and went straight for the fridge. Lord help me.
I didn't think anything would beat the tampon, but the tomato definitely made me feel the absolute silliest.
The surface of the tomato wasn't too far off from the silicone bra inserts, so I had to slap the foundation into my skin again. Let me tell you, that tomato was heavy, and it straight-up hurt.
And, because DUH, the tomato left a patchy, mostly bare mess in its wake.
At this point, my skin was just begging to go back to the Beautyblender.
8. A hard-boiled egg.
Possibly the most anger-inducing sponge hack to hit the internet, the egg made me want to cry just thinking about it.
The egg's size and shape might've hit all the corners and creases well, but that certainly didn't make up for the fact that it left its odor all over my face. And the rest of the room.
Sigh. Putting makeup on my face with smelly, perishable foods is definitely not the future my parents had envisioned for me.
And by the time I was near finished blending everything out, I was caught with egg on my face. Literally.
Soooooo… no.
This is not a reasonable alternative to the Beautyblender. If you're genuinely taking the time to hard boil eggs in the morning to do this, I recommend taking a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror.
I certainly did after writing this.
And I KNOW you're thinking, "but what about the condoms, Nicola?! THE CONDOMS."
And to that I say: No. No, no, no. NO. Absolutely not. Why? Because I don't HATE MYSELF, that's why.
The last thing my sensitive skin needs is the risk of latex and spermicidal lube. And if you think I'm going to ruin a perfectly good Beautyblender for this post, you are mistaken.
I may be extra, but I'm not delusional.
At the end of my journey, I found that there was only one thing that applied my makeup flawlessly and easily: AN ACTUAL BEAUTYBLENDER.
For the love of God, just use the damn makeup sponge.
Learn from my mistakes; I'm begging you.
