4 eyebrow challenges and how to shape yours perfectly
What's Your Arch Enemy?
You slather creams around your eyes, touch up your grays, and do time on the treadmill—but what have you done for your eyebrows lately? If you've never given much thought to your arches beyond the occasional tweezing, now is probably a good time to start. "Like your skin and hair, your brows can make you look older then you are," says brow expert Kathleen Mahn, Esthetician at Bella Toccare de Spa & Salon. "Over time brows thin and grey" And just as a new hairstyle can trim away the years, a well-groomed, well-defined brow can lend your face a years-younger look.Whether yours are thinning, fading, or graying, we help you get them in shape!
1. Vanishing Brows
The Problem: Like thinning hair, sparse brows come with age, so they make you look older than you are.The Solution: Use a brow powder, pencil, or eye shadow to fill in patchy spots and make your arches look thicker.
Your Fix for Vanishing Brows
1. Start by gently pulling your skin taut with one hand to create a smooth surface.2. With a stiff, angled brow brush, dust on the powder in the same direction your hairs grow, using light, feathery strokes. Concentrate on sparse areas. Start by prepping the skin with your eye cream. Aveda's Green Science eye cream does a great job. With cream you can more easily blend the powder or pencil to look more natural and less like a pencil or powder.
3. When you're finished, brush the hairs up and out with a clean mascara wand; this blends and softens the powder so it looks more natural and removes any excess powder.
2. Disappearing Tails
The Problem: Brows naturally thin at the outer edges (by your temples) first, but a fast fade can also be the result of overplucking. The tail of the brow is the part that sets off the arch, which makes eyes look youthful and sexy. The eyes seem droopy and tired with out that tail.The Solution: Lengthen your brow tails with a pencil or powder.
Your Fix for Disappearing Tails
1. First, determine where the tail of your brow should end by holding a pencil diagonally from the outside corner of your nostril to the outer corner of your eye. The spot where the pencil intersects with your brow is your target.2. Extend your brows to that point by using the brow pencil or powder over cream to sketch light, feathery strokes in the same direction your hairs grow.
3. Set the pencil—and blend the penciled-in tails with the rest of your hairs—by stroking a tinted brow gel over the entire length of your eyebrows.
3. Graying Brows
The Problem: "From afar, gray or white brows disappear completely, which makes your features look unbalanced," our estheticians explain.The Solution: Camouflage colorless hairs using the right technique, which depends on the number of grays you have.
Your Fix for Graying Brows
1. Hide a few strays with a brow marker that matches your eyebrow color; the felt-tip point lets you paint hairs precisely with a natural-looking color. Xtreme lash makes a brow marker we carry.2. If you have a significant number of grays, color them temporarily. We offer Brow and lash tinting that will last approximately 4 to 6 weeks.
3. If your brows are mostly gray, dyeing them is the best fix. Ask your stylist (brows can be colored when you get your haircolor service) or have it done at a spa.
4. Overgrown Brows
The Problem: Bushy brows can make eyes look smaller. And longer, coarser hairs (which appear with age) may overhang at the outer edges, making lids look droopy.
The Solution: Trim, tweeze, and set hairs in place for arches that are under control. Your Fix for Overgrown Brows
1. Brush all the hairs up with a clean mascara wand (disposable is best), then use brow scissors to cut the tips of hairs that extend above the top edge of the brow line, one at a time. (Cutting them all with one snip across leaves a straight edge that looks unnatural.)2. Next, use slant-tip tweezers to pluck stray hairs that grow outside the swath of hair that defines your natural brow shape. "This can be tricky, so we recommend going to a pro," says our estheticians.
3. Finish with clear brow gel to set hairs in place without darkening them.
