Camoflauge the Ungroomed Eyebrow

Having a well groomed eyebrow is so powerful for the look of your face. It automatically makes you look put together. They frame your eyes, and add depth and personality to your facial expressions while talking.  In an ideal world, one would get them groomed 3-5 weeks, depending on the growth pattern of your brows. But lets be real - we are all living very busy lives. Sometimes it takes everything to throw on some lip gloss while we are running out of the house to get to work, or an appointment on time.

This tip is not necessarily a time saver - especially if it is a new skill for you. It does take practice to shape your brows properly. (No one wants to have the permanent SURPRISED look on their face or have a Way-Too-Dark-Too-Thick-Brow across your forehead). This tip will, however, help stretch your waxing or threading appointments if you are too busy or a little tight for cash.

First, you want to brush your brow to help lay down the hair so that they are all going in the same direction. Make sure you are using a brush that is designed for eyebrows. You can get this from the drugstore or a makeup counter. The one I use is from Sephora.

Classic Brow Comb #11

Combing down the hairs (this is the only before pic)

 For the record, my brows have not been groomed, professionally in about 5 weeks. Next you have to choose what you will use to bring out your brows. There are so many products out there: brow brush systems that look very similar to mascara, pencils, waxes, correctors. It doesn't really matter which you choose. The most important thing is that you use short strokes with your technique. You want to think about it as if you are drawing little hairs right where you want them to be.  For this demo I used Makeup Forever Waterproof Eyebrow Corrector in #30 (dark brown). Since this is not a pencil I have to use a brush to apply the product. I am using a small angled brush/tapered liner brush to achieve this "groomed" eyebrow. I am using the tapered side of the Double-Ended Shaping Brush from Bare Minerals.




Small Angled Brush

Notice I am using dark brown corrector. Unless your hair is jet black, NEVER use black corrector. It will always look unnatural.  If you have blonde to brown hair color, your corrector should be 1-2 shades darker than your hair. If you have brunette to dark brown hair color, your corrector should be 1-2 shades lighter than your hair. This applies whether you are using a spooley, pencil, or wax corrector.

Now to shape your eye. It is just like coloring in a child's coloring book. Outline the edges, and then fill in - it is as simple as that :-). When you are drawing the outline, you are in fact drawing the shape of your brow, so make sure you are doing short strokes so you don't get carried away.  First, outline the bottom line of your brow. Don't worry about the straggling hairs. As you highlight the hair you want there, it will appear the stragglers are gone when you are all finished.

Next you want to draw the top line of the brow.

Notice  I did not draw a line at the inside border of the eyebrow. If you do that the brow tends to look less natural. If you are going for a bold look, going out for the evening, then draw it. It will just pump up your look.

Next fill in the middle - while still using short strokes.

Lastly, you want to blend the corrector with your eyebrow hairs. Do this by simply brushing your eyebrow with your eyebrow brush.  Here you can get a little product on the inner most part of your brow without drawing the border. (If you are using a spooley system - one that is like a mascara wand- than you can skip this step).

Now you are all finished. A nicely groomed eye that did not cost you time, gas, and money to get to the salon and get your brows arched.

Here is an optional step. You can choose to cover the stragglers by applying a little bit of your concealer right under the brow.

Now to see the before and after

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this.

I hope it was helpful. When you use the technique leave me a comment and share the before and after pics. I would love to see how you enhance your natural - ungroomed- eyebrow.

~Kari