How to Create Beautiful Brows

If you're ready to update your look, your makeover could begin by getting your eyebrows in shape. Messy brows -- unruly, too thin, too thick, too plucked -- undermine even the best beauty routine, experts say.

"Even in magazines, I will look at the models, the makeup is perfect and sometimes the brows are bad," says Piret Aava, a makeup artist and eyebrow specialist at the Warren Tricomi Salon in Greenwich, UK.

Which is tragic, says makeup artist, eyebrow expert and colleague Tamara Palumbo. "Your brow is the frame of your eyes." Palumbo will shape brows as part of the Warren Tricomi team doing star makeup for next month's Academy Awards. "If you get them right, it can be like an instant facelift. I have clients who tell me getting their brow shape right has done more for them than Botox."

To help get your arches in order, we asked Aava and Palumbo to demonstrate some do's and don'ts on women with brow dilemmas.

One, Ana Rodriguez, an assistant to the colorists at Warren Tricomi, had her brows waxed and plucked to the extreme several months ago at a walk-in nail salon. "I had nice thick brows, and I let them take too much away," says Rodriguez, who has been patiently growing out the mistake at Palumbo's urging.

Aava demonstrated some tips for making thin or skimpy brows more prominent on her client Kristiina Valter, a fair-skinned blonde who struggles with making her brows pop.

"She has pretty eyes," says Aava, "which are even prettier when her brows are able to draw attention to them."

The results were eye-raising.

For Rodriguez and Palumbo:

• Tinted her brows (using a nontoxic, vegetable-based dye) at the rims to add fullness.
• Cleaned up strays above and below the brow line using lavender-based wax. More sensitive than wax commonly used to wax legs and other body parts, Palumbo did not use wax to alter the brow line. "Wax is just going to get you cleaned up where you've got strays," she says. "Altering the brow line itself is a job for tweezers. It's a precise art and it can't be accomplished with wax."
• In areas within the natural brow that were sparse, the artist worked in a neutral eye pencil using tiny strokes. She noted she did not take the pencil to areas where there wasn't brow growth. "You don't want to draw brows on your face with pencil like it's a crayon. It should just be to enhance what's there."
• Palumbo then brushed the brows into place, set them with gel (she uses Paula Dorf's at the salon) and applied a dab of concealer to areas made slightly red by the process.

The result? "Amazing," says Rodriguez, "To me, the before and after is incredible."
For Valter and Aava:

• Tinted her eyebrows and lashes, using a blend of blue and black vegetable dyes. "The eyelashes point up toward the brow, bringing the attention up and making the whole area more prominent," she says. The process requires sitting with your eyes closed and covered for several minutes. "Some of my clients don't like doing it, but I try to make it relaxing for them because if they can do it, it's very effective."
• On the brows, she used a color slightly darker than Valter's natural hair color to give definition. "It makes them pumped up."

Tips:

• Try a professional grooming to get your brows back on track, says
  Palumbo. Even if you can't afford the regular splurge, a pro may help
  you understand how to improve your grooming habits.

   

• Want to know where your brows should start? Aava takes a
  cuticle stick, presses it close to the base of a client's nose, and
  bends it at the slightest angle up toward the inner corner of the
  lashes. "You want it right about there," she says. Coming in too far,
  like many people do in an effort to create balance, can throw off the
  overall symmetry of the face.

   

• Be careful with magnifying mirrors, says Aava. "A lot of people use them to be more precise and then over-pluck."

   

• When in doubt "don't pluck it out," says Palumbo, who
  says it's almost always better to under-rather than over-groom. "The
  only exception being strays between the eyes."

   

• Tell your brow artist if you are taking any medication,
  or applying topicals such as Retin-A, alpha hydroxy or glycolic acids,
  which can make skim extremely sensitive and even rip when waxed. "I
  need to know that before I wax or pluck," says Aava.

   

• If you need to manage your brows on the cheap and pay for
  an inexpensive waxing at a walk-in nail salon, insist on demonstrating
  exactly what you want groomed before any tweezing or wax is applied. "I
  would just have them clean up above and below the natural brow line and
  not let them alter the contour in anyway," says Palumbo. "It's the
  easiest way to keep problems from arising."

   

• Invest in a tube of gel to set brows. Maybelline Great
  Lash Mascara in clear and Paula Dorf's brow gel are two of Palumbo's
  favorites. "Both set brows nicely without being tacky." For clients who
  get tints, Aava recommends tinted gels to fill in gaps between
  treatments. She favors Paula Dorf and MAC.

   

• Even sparse brows can use a cleanup above and below the
  natural brow line, says Aava. "You want to get rid of the fuzz to keep
  the overall look clean."

Source: The Stamford Advocate. Powered by Yellowbrix.