Your Ultimate Guide To Perfect Eyebrows (and How to Help Them Grow)
Big, bold eyebrows are definitely having a moment. Just look at brow-blessed celebs like Cara Delevingne and Bambi Northwood-Blyth. But how can you make yours gorgeous without the help of an A-list makeup team? Don’t fret – we’ve got you gal.
Even if you don’t consider yourself #blessed in the brow department, there’s hope: All it takes is a few steps to take your brows from barely there to bushy.
While you can add fullness and definition with growth-enhancing serums, microblading or tinting, knowing how to fill in your eyebrows at home with makeup is a bonus way to amplify your arches.
Read more below.
How many different kinds of brow shapes are there?
Every pair of brows is unique making way for billions of shapes – however most brows can be categorised into of the following shapes: Straight, Softly Arched, Highly Arched or Curved.
How can you determine what the right shape for your face is?
I’m a big believer in working with your natural shape to achieve Brow Gold – however mother nature doesn’t always know what’s best when it comes to brow shaping. At Benefit, we use a technique called Brow Mapping to ensure the perfect shape every time. This technique works with your unique facial structure and natural brow shape to find where your brows should start, arch + end – three points crucial to finding the right shape for you.
How do you properly shape your brows?
First, avoid the mistakes; and there are three: Scooped out arches, where women over tweeze underneath their arch and end up with too thin brows and a severely round shape; taking brows too far apart – this makes the eyes appear smaller and the nose wider; and short arches – where the highest points of the brows (arch) are too close to the centre of the face – longer arches work to frame and open the whole face! Read more her:
This Is The Biggest Mistake You’re Making When Shaping Your Brows
To find out more we asked for 10 ultimate brow-care tips, according to Celebrity Brow Stylist & Founder of Lux Brows & Lashes, Kim Evans.
1. Brush Your Brows Daily
Just like the hair on your head, your brows need daily TLC. Brushing your brows daily stimulates the follicles to encourage new hair growth. Using a spoolie brush also helps amplify volume giving each hair the attention that it deserves.
2. Condition Your Brows Daily
You need to condition your brows daily too! This is so important and more so if you’re having brow services: tinting, henna, lamination treatments on your brows. To maintain brows with optimum hair health, we recommend using Brow Soap which contains nourishing, hydrating oils; Castor, Coconut, Olive & Jojoba.
3. Don’t Over Pluck
*Don’t pluck every few days or worse EVERYDAY! Visit your brow specialist every 4-8 weeks (depending on your growth cycle). Overplucking can cause trauma inflicted on hair follicles and can lead to permanent follicle damage and there’s no coming back from that.
4. Keep your serums, moisturisers and sunscreen off brow feathering
If you’re having a popular Brow Feathering treatment, ensure your active skin care isn’t applied on or too close to the brow feathering as it will break down, blur and potentially discolour the brow pigment. To avoid any potential issues, once you apply any lotions, wipe your brows over with a damp brow puff ensuring no lotions remain on the brow pigment.
5. Follow Your Aftercare Instructions if you Visit a Salon
For longevity of your brow treatments, it’s CRUCIAL to follow the Aftercare instructions. Brow treatments generally require you to not wet the brows and avoid any oils and moisturisers for a minimum of 1-2 days for any tint/dye/henna and 7 days for tattooing – this allows the tint/dye/henna /pigment to stabilise on the skin’s surface and hair cuticle. Disruption during this process breaks down the stability of the treatment and lasting duration of the treatment. After this period, it’s important to continue conditioning your brow hairs.
6. Clean Your Brow Brushes
This is really important and one we quite often forget. To prevent product build up and bacteria forming it’s best to clean brushes at least once a week. Use a brush cleanser of your choice (baby shampoo is fabulous) apply cleanser to a brow puff and gently stroke brushes back and forth on the surface to clean, rinse with fresh water and air dry brushes – ideally on a 45 degree angle enabling water to run out. DO NOT rub brushes harshly when cleaning or you will damage the fine hair.
What Your Eyebrows Say About Your Personality
7. Accentuating Your Brow Shape
Brow powder or brow pencils are great tools to assist you with creating the most flattering brow shape. Firstly, make sure you apply primer or some foundation on the brow area to help the brow makeup remain for the day. We suggest not filling your brows completely with powder but draw an outline on the top and baseline of the brows and then another on top the arch to the tail tip. Then blend, blend, blend. If needed, add slightly more power to any missing hair areas. Next tip is to define and accentuate the brow shape by applying brow highlight pencil directly along the baseline of the brow and again BLEND! Use a brow pencil if you want to really define your brow arch, tail tips and the base at the very start of the brow. Brows done!
8. Choose the Right Brow Colour
The biggest mistake I regularly see people make when choosing a brow powder or pencil is choosing a colour that is too dark for their brows. This, in combination with being heavy-handed when applying, means the colour becomes smeared and the result is slug-like brows. Choose a slightly lighter brow colour, this allows you to fill the brows and create that perfectly defined brow shape without the colour looking too heavy. Don’t over apply and blend blend blend to achieve a fabulous polished look.
9. Brow Tint Vs Hybrid Brow
A brow tint is exactly that, it’s a tint that simply washes off the skin and hair, not dissimilar to a hair tint. It doesn’t penetrate the hair and only coats the hair follicle. Hybrid brow is an extra long lasting dye that colours both the skin and hair lasting up to 10-14 days on the skin and up to 6-7 weeks on the hair (of course results vary per individual). Hybrid brow is perfect for those who want both a skin stain and more hair coverage – that doesn’t mean the colour has to be darker colour, it means longer lasting colour on the brow hair.
10. How to Combat Thinning Brows
Thinning brows unfortunately is just one more sign of aging that we have to look forward to. Aging leads the hair follicle to look thinner and more sparse. Abrupt hormone changes (pregnancy and breastfeeding) are also common causes for sudden hair loss as is Menopause. Stress also leads to thinning and brow hair loss as does atopic dermatitis or eczema due to inflammation and itching around the brow area. Unfortunately, no amount of searching for the miracle growth serum will reignite the dead hair follicle to regrow, once that follicle is dead, it’s over. Utilise brow powders and pencils to fill in brows for a more complete look. Or, opt for Brow Feathering (microblading is semi-permanent brow tattooing) which is a natural looking brow alternative to achieve the brows you’ve always dreamt of.
Meghan Markle’s Makeup Artist On How To Get Her Brows
Source: Read Full Article