Getting your eyebrows done professionally is great if you’re terrified of ruining your eyebrows or just have so much hair on your face that you have no idea what to do with it all. However, it gets pretty pricey, and it eventually just becomes too expensive to have a woman rip a strip of wax off of your face every two to three weeks. If you have sensitive skin, hair removal techniques such as waxing and threading can also end up irritating the skin and leaving behind redness and an unfortunate series of breakouts. With natural and bushy eyebrows being on-trend, now is the perfect time to learn how to groom those face framing caterpillars, all while saving some cash. Here are some tips on how to keep brows in shape, extending the time between the hot wax and thread:
This may be obvious, but get a good pair of tweezers.
You can find a reliable pair on any budget. They’re available from Revlon for $6 or from Tweezerman for $20 (Tweezerman guarantees free sharpening, which makes the investment worth it). Make sure to read reviews, because you do not want to end up spending any amount of money on a pair that can’t grab a hair or pinches the life out of your skin.
Outline your desired shape with an eyebrow pencil.
This tip is best if you are trying to change the shape of your brows only slightly. If you are going for a complete brow transformation, you should probably go to a professional for the first time to shape them and then maintain them on your own. If you’re only grooming them and doing some upkeep, though, use a brow pencil to draw a harsh line as a guide to see what hairs to pluck. If any hairs are outside of the line, pluck, but if any hairs are within or on the line, leave them be.
Brush the hairs up with a spoolie and trim.
If the hairs are growing too long, grab a spoolie (you can get free ones by the handful from Sephora) and brush the hairs upward, especially the ones in the front, and trim them using a small pair of scissors (they sell scissors specifically for trimming eyebrows and beards). But please be careful with this — sharp objects and eyes aren’t the best of friends.
Don’t wait too long to pluck.
It’s easy to tell which hairs are out of place when they’re short and stray. If you wait long enough for them to grow in, they blend in with the rest of the longer hairs, and it’s harder to tell what you should tweeze and what you shouldn’t.
They’re sisters, not twins, blah blah blah.
We’ve all heard the saying, yet we all want perfectly symmetrical brows. If one eyebrow is slightly thicker than the other, do not go overboard trying to even them out. You will end up with early 2000s Christina Aguilera eyebrows. They can never be completely symmetrical, and that’s okay!
Paola Bakker is a contributing writer. Email her at violetvision@nyunews.com.
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