There are several things you will need when designing eyebrows, and one of them is not a razor. A razor will take off entirely too much as well as provide little, or no design control. You will need a good pair of tweezers, and possibly a small pair of scissors. You don’t have to be afraid of taking off too much hair because any mistakes you may make can be fixed with eye shadow, eyeliner, or eyebrow pencil. I mention all these things because sometimes you have to use what you have on hand.
In high school cosmetology, and still today, I design clients, and friend’s eyebrows. God has blessed me with great eyebrow arches just like my mother’s. Don’t loose hope if you aren’t blessed with any eyebrow arches. I will provide you with tips to achieve eyebrow arches you never knew possible.
If it’s your first time designing your eyebrows, and you fear pain, you may want to stay away from using tweezers. I recall the first time I used them I thought I was going to die. My eyes watered, my nose ran, and my eyebrow skin turned bright red, and bled. Yes, it can be painful the first few times, but you don’t feel anything after a while. You are meant to stretch your skin nice and tight before you pluck; I don’t on myself but I do on others. It makes the pain a lot less. Also, when you pull the hairs, pull them as fast as possible in the direction the hair grows.
Before you begin plucking away those hairs let’s cover some of the common eyebrow mistakes people make. The worst eyebrow mistake people make is making their eyebrows a very thin line with no “meat.” If you look at models, actresses, TV news anchors, and any magazine such as Redbook Magazine, you will see no one has these types of eyebrows. Why, because it’s not flattering to any face. If you’ve never really studied eyebrows before they are plucked, trimmed and designed, they are a shape of a bushy comma turned 90 degrees counter clockwise. Don’t design the eyebrows to be exactly like a comma, though. Whitney Houston was made fun of in tabloids for having “comma eyebrows.”
Another common eyebrow mistake is people don’t allow the eyebrow to flow. They pluck or even shave with a razor, everything but a thin line, and leave a ball shape where two eyebrows part in the middle of the face.
Yet another mistake is they forget to remove the hair in the middle of the face where the two eyebrows part. You don’t want to do a wonderful job, and forget to do the trim. Always remove the uni-brow.
If your eyebrows are as the above mentioned I mean no personal insult, and I’m sorry if you felt, or feel that way. That’s not the intention of this article; it’s to merely explain a few things.
Trimming eyebrows can be a very hard job if you wear glasses, or even need them and don’t wear them. You will miss certain angles, and aspects you would normally see if you had 20/20 vision. Example, say you have great vision in your right eye but horrible in your left. When you are designing your left eyebrow you will not be seeing as clearly as you do out of your eye right as you will be looking at your left eyebrow with your left eye.
One piece of advice I received from a Mary Kay consultant, and Cosmetology teacher has been proven false. She said to never trim the top of the eyebrows. I don’t know if she was old-schooling it, or if she believed it to be fact. But I can tell you, if you never trim the top of your eyebrows you will never achieve the eyebrows of your dreams. People who have Jack Nicholson eyebrows need to trim off the points so they don’t appear to be “evil” or “angry” all the time. Those who are born without great arches will have to trim the top of the outer edge thus lower the eyebrow to create the eyebrow arch.
Designing your eyebrows or someone elses will take some time looking at the angles of the face, and of course, you will need to be in a very well lit room.
The end of the eyebrow should be from the edge of your closed mouth on either side; going diagonal upward and away from each corner you should find the end of your eyebrow.
To locate the starting of your eyebrow, and separation of the two to go the edge of your nose nostrils, going upward on both sides you will find what you have to trim in the middle of your face. You have also now found where the eyebrow begins.
To locate your eyebrow arch, once again go back to your nostrils; in a diagonal upward and away from each nostril you will locate where your eyebrow arch should be.
Now that’s the basic layout of any eyebrow. If you wish to give yourself a hard edge look instead of a softer look, at the beginning of the eyebrow you trim it to be a corner of a square. If you wish to give yourself a softer look you would round the top just by trimming off a few hairs, approximately three or four, just enough to give you a soft rounded curve.
Since eyebrow styles change throughout the years as well as hairstyles, you will need to work out what’s best for you. To achieve a well-defined arch, trim the top of the eyebrow just before the arch, leading the hair in a slight angle upward to create your arch. Now trim under the eyebrow on the inside after the arch. Keep the hairs neat and tidy, all grouped together. Be careful to not create a ball effect at the start of the eyebrow. You will also need to trim the underside of the beginning of the eyebrow for lose hairs, and providing the eyebrow with a more flowing effect upward towards the arch.
Eyebrows much like eyes don’t have to match, but don’t make them so different that it looks odd looking at your face. If you look very close at several top models, and actresses you will notice an ever so slight difference between their two eyebrows. Why? Because each eye is different and in order to for the face to look more uniform you need to make the eyebrows flatter the eyes.
