Your guide to perfect brows (every single time!)

Well-defined brows frame your eyes and help balance your features. Shaping and colouring in are the quickest and most dramatic ways of enhancing their appearance – but take care to avoid the pitfalls.

Step 1: Arch appeal

Before you get tweezer happy, you need a game plan. Start by determining where you’d like the highest part of your arch to appear, and work from there. As a general rule of thumb, the arch should be in line with the outer edge of your iris when you’re looking directly ahead.

Step 2: The big tweeze

It’s best to tweeze after a bath or shower when skin is soft and supple. Gently pull skin taut in the area you’re tweezing to prevent tugging. Grip one hair at a time, at the base, and remove in the direction in which it grows. Finish with a cold compress to soothe skin. 

Dealing with common brow problems

Curly eyebrows 

Unruly, curly brows can be tamed. Comb hairs upwards, in the direction of initial growth, and trim the tips of long hairs with a small, sharp pair of scissors. Comb into a line across the top of the eyebrows.

Straight eyebrows

You can totally fake an arch. Firstly, determine where the arch should be as per step one above. From the centre of your imaginary arch outwards, tweeze lightly along the upper part of the brow to shape it down slightly. Then, from the arch inwards, tweeze lightly along the bottom line, to lift it. Finally, use an eyebrow pencil to define the shape: From the inside to the arch, fill in along the top of the brow, and from the arch towards the outer point, fill in along the lower line. Hello, arches!

Skimpy eyebrows

It’s the same story every time – a pair of tweezers, time on your hands, and before you know it… your brows look moth-eaten! To recover from this faux pas you’ll need to take a break from brow shaping while you wait for your hair to grow back. Fill in the gaps with a sharp brow pencil in the meantime. 

IMAGE CREDIT: 123rf.com