I recently picked up a couple of money saving beauty gadgets to review – two beauty spatulas at either end of the affordability scale. The Every Drop Beauty Spatula (£9.45) and the Primark makeup spatula (£1). I thought they’d both save me a bit of money, but I didn’t realise quite how much!
I chose four different items with different types of packaging to test these spatulas out on. My selections were: a concealer in a squeezy tube, a serum in a glass bottle with a pump, a glass foundation bottle with a stick applicator and an eyeshadow primer with a doefoot applicator. I also bought these little travel makeup pots for £1 from Primark, so I have something to decant everything into.
I considered all of these items to be “empty” and if not totally empty, then only a few uses away from being binned.
First of all, let’s compare these spatulas:
So the Primark beauty spatula (£1) on the left is slightly shorter, has a wide handle and a springy neck – whereas the handle of the Every Drop spatula (£9.50) is essentially just a long plastic stick. The two heads seem to be made out of a similar material and are a similar width and shape. The longer length of the Every Drop spatula is obviously more useful if you were scraping something out of a taller bottle.
Using them, I found them both to be effective, and there wasn’t much between them in how well they coped with the job of scraping leftover beauty products from small containers. The BIGGEST difference was in how easy it was to get the product off the spatula and into the container and how simple they were to clean afterwards.
The concertina detail on the Primark spatula is soooo difficult to clean – all of the makeup sinks into the crevices and it doesn’t come out easily, at all. But, it’s £8.50 less than the Every Drop option, so saving £8 is probably worth the extra effort.
Just a pro tip for if you buy either of these spatulas, use a makeup wipe to clean them off, I didn’t have much luck with my usual brush cleaning routine.
How much product did I remove from my “empties”?
First of all, I weighed the empty pots I was using, with the lid on. My scale is just a normal kitchen one, so no decimal points, I’m not a drug dealer!
I’m going to weigh the results of my spatula-ting for each product, and work out how much that’s worth in comparison to the full sized product.
Gen-Hyal Hyaluronic acid serum
Full size: 1.7 fluid ounces 48.8g
Full size price: £58
Amount extracted: 2g
Value: £2.37
Packaging with a pump seems to actually be one of the most efficient – there was barely any left over once I stopped being able to pump it.
YSL Fusion Ink foundation
Full size: 25g
Full size price: £33.50
Amount extracted: 2g
Value: £2.68
I knew I could have got more out of this bottle, but the narrow neck and inflexible glass made it pretty difficult in the end.
Clarins Instant Concealer
Full size: 15g
Full size price: £22
Amount extracted: 8g
Value: £11.73
I ALWAYS cut the ends off tubes, no handcream is safe! This helped me scoop out almost all of this concealer.
NARS Pro Prime smudge proof eyeshadow base
Full size: 8g
Full size price: £19.50
Amount extracted: 5g
Value: £12.18
Unfortunately both of the spatulas were too wide to fit inside this packaging the usual way, so I had to hack it apart with a breadknife.
Total value extracted from all products: £28.96 – crazy huh?
I was most shocked by the NARS eyeshadow primer, as honestly, none was really coming out on the brush any more, and I was convinced it was pretty much totally finished, but more than HALF of the product was still in the tube when I cut it open. I even took a picture:
All of that product was just at the end where the doefoot couldn’t reach, and at the top beneath the opening!
Results
Is it worth getting one of these spatulas? 100% yes. Didn’t you see, I just scraped out close to £30 worth of makeup that I was just going to throw away. That easily covered the cost of both spatulas (and you only really need one). If you did this with all of your empties you could easily save yourself hundreds of pounds a year.
Which spatula was my favourite? I think it has to be the Every Drop spatula, just for ease of cleaning, but it’s ten times the price of Primark’s version, so definitely opt for that one if you’re on a budget.
All in all, these are a must-buy for any beauty lover, please get one!
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Hey! I’m Bronni and I’m a financial journalist and deals hunter in my mid 20s. I’m really into cats, pop music, the internet and barely substantiated celebrity gossip.
