Why Yes, I Even Have an Opinion on Cotton

Friday, March 29, 2013

I'm going to discuss something that a lot of beauty and nail lovers alike use every day without much thought. It's not exciting or new, it's just cotton. Yet somehow I've become somewhat of a snob when it comes to cotton. It might be hard to believe but I honestly have preferred brands and types.

First up, cotton balls for removing polish. I love the Swisspers Jumbo cotton balls, I ordered them from Drugstore.com when they had a 40% off sale combined with a BOGO, but they're found in brick & mortar stores too. Back when I was in cosmetology school, I used these giant boxes of cotton coils, because they dispensed easily. The giant box however doesn't look so cute sitting on my table, so I switched back to cotton balls.

The Swisspers large and you can peel them apart to use them a la Deborah Lippmann polish removal technique. This method is downright awesome, if you haven't seen this video by Michelle of All Lacquered Up, please take a look. It's 30 seconds long and literally saved me so much time when removing polish.

With the jumbo sized Swisspers, I can use a single cotton ball to remove a complete manicure on both hands. If it's a glitter or something with messy shimmer, maybe a cotton ball and a half. Considering how many swatches I do every month, that's pretty awesome that I only have to buy a new bag every month. Prior to the DL method, I was looking into buying cotton in bulk at Costco because I was seriously going through 3-4 bags of 100 normal balls a month. That's downright insane.

Now, how about cotton for my face and neck? I have an ongoing love affair with Asian cotton pads. I seriously feel like the majority of Asian brands are softer than any American ones that I find at the drugstore. My favorite thing to do with them is to create mini masks, the way Chizu Saeki does in the following video. (Side note, I think I love Chizu. Her smile is so warm and her skin is amazing.)

As you can see, these Suzuran ones peel apart to three layers when wet. I always add a pack of pads whenever I'm shopping on Sasa.com (link here) to help bump up my total to get free shipping. They're very cheap, only $3.50 for a pack of 240. I think the Suzuran ones are great for daily use but if you want larger stretching cotton squares, I recommend the SELENA brand five layered cotton pads. In the past, I've received samples of the much lauded Shiseido cotton pads but think that they are really rather overpriced for what they are (Jeweled Thumb voices my sentiments perfectly in this post).

The last kind of cotton I use are the ones I use for removing swatches on my arm (aka the ones the Morgan can also use. Pfft, like I'm going to let him use my nice cotton). I honestly like the cheapest cotton pads the most. In the past, I used the exfoliating Up & Up cotton rounds from Target but found that they had lots of hard lumps that could sometimes scratch me (especially when scrubbing dark colors off my arm). I absolutely love the cheapo Dollar Tree cotton rounds. $1 and they don't leave lint on clean skin or break apart.

So yes, that just about sums up my nutty post that is all about cotton. What do you think? Do you have a preference for cotton or are you amazed at how crazy I am about it?

Products featured were purchased by me, for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.