Eyebrow Shaping Tips

Okay, so I got a request from one of my friends for a tutorial on how I pluck my eyebrows, since she thinks I have “great eyebrows.” Now, personally, I don’t see anything special about my eyebrows. I sometimes tend to pluck them a little on the thin side, and they are basically gold, and the outside edges tend to disappear in the wrong light, and sometimes when exposed to the strong flash from a camera. However, this friend is not the first one to compliment me on the shape of my eyebrows, and since its seems like such a random feature to compliment, I’m not sure I can really disagree.

Now enough back story, here’s my issue: I’m not entirely sure what to say about plucking one’s eyebrows, as I mostly do it on auto-pilot, and I’ve been doing it so long. So, I’m going to put off doing some sort of tutorial for a while, and just give you some tips that I think are important to keep in mind when plucking and shaping your brows:

1. ALWAYS keep your natural shape in mind. No matter how much you want a certain shaped brow, if your natural brow shape is completely different, forcing it to follow another shape will not work well, and will do odd things to your face.
2. For the most part, you should only pluck hairs from below your brow line, please leave the ones above this line alone.
   There is an exception, though; for example, if I get lazy and let my brows go too long without plucking, I get these little hairs just above the outside corner of my brows that really have nothing to do with the over all shape. If you too have these hairs, feel free to remove them, just don’t get too close to the hairs you want to keep.
3. Be careful when plucking below the outside corners. I used to have a major problem with this, and at one point, the outside corners were basically a line of single hairs. Not a good look.
4. Find your natural arch. No one wants a straight, thick caterpillar brow like Sandy Cohen from the OC:
   

   For me, and for most people,  the arch will be aligned with the outside of your iris (the coloured part of your eye) when you are looking straight ahead.
   

   I darkened my eyebrows a little bit for this picture to make sure you can really see them, and I think its obvious just it was necessary, since they don’t look darkened.

5. Personally, I find its much easier to use pointed tweezers than slanted tip ones, since when I try to use slanted ones, I often can’t get a grip on the hairs, or else I end up cutting the end of the hair off, instead of pulling the whole thing out.

   

6. Finally, make sure you don't make your inner corners too thin, and they certainly shouldn't be pointy. I usually try to make mine look somewhat rounded, and you should aim for a somewhat rounded line. Also, be sure to pluck as much of the tiny little hairs between your eyebrows, even if they aren't very visible, because it gives you a cleaner look.

7. Try not to use a magnifying mirror for this job. Its a lot easier to go overboard, and think there are a lot more hairs that need to be pulled than there really are if you are looking at yourself in a magnified mirror.

8. Please be careful that you don't pull out any of the long hairs in your brows, as these are the ones that give your eyebrows their shape. If you pull one, there will be a hole in your eyebrow, and unless you like having to patch up holey eyebrows with pencil, just don’t go there.

I’m sure I haven’t touched on everything, but these are the biggest things that I can think of right now that you should know. Once you’ve plucked your eyebrows into a good shape, its a lot easier to maintain them by plucking out the strays now and then.

Finally, if you mess something up, say you put a hole in one eyebrow, or you pluck way too many hairs, don’t keep pulling. The more you pull out, the longer it will take to fix itself. And you don’t want to super-pluck the other side too, just because you over did it on the first brow. Just put the tweezers down, and walk away, and let the necessary hairs grow back. Its better to have slightly wonky brows, in my opinion, for a week or so, than it is to have super tiny ones for ages.

Sandy picture from here, the rest are my own.