Eyebrows are extremely important, if you haven't seen the pictures of celebrities without eyebrows circulating then you definitely want to google it, if not just to laugh but to also see how annoyingly beautiful Jessica Alba still looks!
About 13 years ago I worked as a beauty therapist and also did wedding make-overs. I remember one bridesmaid in particular, her eyebrows were terrible, a thin strip that went up and then a line across that stopped half way above her eye, what made it worse was that she'd paid someone to do it! Now the training you get in beauty collage for make-up is pretty basic so I'd self taught but I'd never done much for eyebrows, I painstakingly took about 15 minutes drawing on tiny fine hairs to eventually create a beautiful brow, once I'd finished everyone commented on how beautiful she was and how much her eyes stood out, as I pointed out to them, it was all about the eyebrows.
But what I also want to point out is that it's not just about shape, colour is very important too. Here comes one of my loathed before and after selfies.
As you can see my eyebrows are naturally quite light because my hair is naturally dark blonde/light brown. I tend to tint them dark brown every 4 weeks but I left them for the sake of this demonstration. As you can see, the colour makes a big difference to my whole appearance, I took the first pic, applied some shadow to my eyebrows (HD brows compact in Foxy) and then took the second, I actually ended up having to shade in a bit more at the beginning of my right brow after the pic was taken but I didn't have time to re-take.
HD brows are a big deal right now but be careful, there are some people claiming to do HD brows but haven't been properly trained by HD themselves, as a friend recently found out when she left the salon looking like this
Ok maybe not so bad but she said the other therapists in the salon couldn't look her in the eye when they took her £25 payment! She'd gone to a random salon because they said they did HD brows, when she told me their routine it was clear they weren't HD trained.
If like me you're a busy mum that sometimes has limited time to apply make-up, eyebrow tinting can save a lot of time and even if you go without make-up, well groomed eyebrows can make you look a bit less washed out. You can buy tints in places like Boots and Superdrug.
Do you find that one day you look in the mirror and your eyebrows look fine but the next day it looks like a few inches of re-growth have grown overnight? Get yourself a magnifying mirror, I check in mine every evening before bed and pluck out any stray hairs before they become eye visible. This enables me to keep my eyebrows continuously well groomed, I simply don't have the time to visit a salon every week to get them done.
If you do want to go to a local salon to have your eyebrows done, ask around, ask on facebook or twitter, get some good recommendations.
If you fancy a colour change experiment with shadows or pencils first, if like me you have dark hair but light eyebrows you'll see a big difference.
If you want to have a go yourself then take a look at the many videos on youtube. A good tip to decide if you want thinner eyebrows is to put some concealer over the eyebrows you want to pluck, it gives you an idea of how you may look, the same goes for going thicker, pencil them in to see what suits you.
I've actually re-shaped my eyebrows since taking the pictures above, I sometimes find it difficult to get both eyebrows the same shape so I bought some eyebrow stencils on ebay, I placed them over my eyebrow, filled in the gap with black eyeliner (yes I looked lush) and then plucked away any hairs outside the outline. I'm really pleased with the outcome, both eyebrows are perfectly shaped and exactly the same.
Remember beauty is all about experimenting and if you overpluck, it won't take too long for your eyebrows to grow back.