By Peggy Perdue
HOW TO PUNCTUATE THE PERFECT BROW! The perfect brow is professionally shaped and filled in for a finished look. This expressive beauty asset is prepped to balance the rest of the face, bringing your best features into focus, like pretty eyes and lips, and downplaying flaws, such as a large nose or pointed chin. When brows are misshaped into commas, harshly penciled in to look like caterpillars, or completely ignored and left naked, a beauty catastrophe happens to the face and the focus becomes the brow. That’s why punctuating the brow properly takes professional know-how.
4. The face shape and facial features help determine the shape of the brow. A round face should have an angled brow with a high arch and a short tail. A square face and a diamond-shaped face should have a curved brow with sharp peak, and a heartshaped face should have a rounded arch. Strong facial features need balance with a fuller brow, and delicate features need a softer brow.
If you are blessed with full dark brows like Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn, all you may need is professional shaping and a few strokes of brow pencil. But if you have sparse brows from over tweezing, chemotherapy, or the aging process, or have light brows because of your blonde, gray or red hair, or you have changed your natural hair color, professional shaping is not enough, definition with the right brow color product is key.
DEFINING: 1. A brow pencil is used for adding color without adding volume to a fuller brow. It provides precise application for filling in blank spots and can be used to draw in realistic brow hairs. The pencil should always be sharp. 2. Brow powder applied with an angled brush creates a soft natural looking brow, adding volume to sparse or over tweezed brows and those who are having chemotherapy. 3. Tinted brow sealers are brushed on like mascara adding color to the brow hair. It is perfect for covering gray hairs. This can be used alone for full brows or on top of a sparse brow that has been filled in with a pencil or brow powder. 4. The general rule for choosing the correct color for your brow is two shades lighter than your hair. But the exact opposite is true for blondes and those with light hair, then the brows should be two shades darker than the hair color. African-American and Hispanic women generally find dark brown brows to be the most flattering, while Asian women look best in a soft black color. 5. ALWAYS BRUSH YOUR PENCIL OR POWDER STROKES SO THEY LOOK MORE NATURAL. A brow brush is a key tool.
Follow this check list of professional pointers to see if your brow is properly shaped and defined. SHAPING: 1. Tweezing is the best form of shaping your brow because it is the most precise, but it can be scary in the hands of an amateur who might over tweeze. Once removed, eyebrow hair grows very slowly—four times slower than scalp hair—which means regrowth can be three to eight weeks. Waxing and threading are not as precise and hair has to grow in at least a quarter-inch between sessions. 2. The beginning of the brow lines up vertically with the nostril and inner eye corner. The end of the brow stops where a diagonal line from the edge of the nostril to the outer corner of the eye crosses the brow. And the arch of the brow lines up vertically with the outside of the iris. The beginning of the brow is adjusted back for close-set brows and forward for wide-set eyes. 3. The head of the brow is fuller than the arch, and the arch is fuller than the end of the brow. The brow should taper and not look like a comma.
The River Region’s 50+ Lifestage Magazine
Set your perfectly finished brow with a brush-on brow gel or finishing spray. Peggy Perdue, Studio owner, Merle Norman, Shoppes at EastChase
r i ve r reg i o n b o o m . co m
June 2013
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