Makeup stains are small, but they do retract form that awesome cosplay that you made!
Makeup stains can be annoying and persistent, especially if you don’t want to wash your whole costume for one reason or another. Maybe some parts are not water-resistant, your fabric is very delicate or you’re afraid the colours will bleed. Luckily, spot-cleaning is quite easy!
Step 1: preparations
Soap and towels I use
First do some preparations.
- Check which parts of your costumes have stains on them, make sure to see them all (nothing is more annoying that finding a new dirty spot when you’ve just put everything away).
- Find a vertical surface to work on and make sure it’s clean, so you don’t get new stains.
- Wash your hands.
- Take your supplies: Clean towels (preferably white ones, so they can’t bleed either) and soap. I use Wipp handwashing soap (the bottle says collars and stains, but we use it for all hand washes).
- Try your soap on a small spot to make sure it doesn’t influence the colour of your garment or has any other negative effect on your fabrics. (Good places for testing are places you won’t see when wearing the cosplay, such as the inside of collars, or places that will be covered by something).
- Put one towel on the working surface to catch the soap and water underneath and protect your garment from the surface.
Step 2: Clean
Fold another towel a few times and put it underneath the spot you want to clean.
Put a small dot of soap on your pinkie finger, and carefully rub or dab it onto your stain, until it disappears. You might need a few more dots of soap before it is completely gone, so keep going and adding soap until you can’t see the stain anymore.
Step 3: Rinse
Since we don’t want to get the whole costume wet, don’t just rinse it in the sink now. Take another clean towel, and wet a corner.
Dab carefully, pressing as much water as you can into the fabric.
Dab the wet corner on the place you put your soap. Don’t rub it. Then use a dry part of your towel and press it against the wet spot to dry it. You might want to re-wet your towel again a few times (best use different corners), until you have soaked up all the soap.
Dab with a dry part to soak up the soapy water.
Your stain should now be gone!
Nice and clean.
Step 4: And repeat
Repeat the previous steps for all your stains. Check all of your towels regularly (the towels you put underneath the garment will have become wet as well) and start each stain with a dry part of the towel or take a new towel.
Hang your costume to dry out of the sun, and you’re done.
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