TUTORIAL: Brows 101

Brows can really add polish to your makeup, and frame your eyes.  Mine are naturally sparse and uneven, so filling them in is a must for me.  Here you can see what a difference a few minutes makes by shaping and doing your brows.  Forget stencils, they are not shaped to the perfect brow for your face shape and can be awkward to work with.

Right side brow filled in and shaped

When picking a brow pencil or a brow powder, go a couple shades lighter than your natural hair color. As you can see here, my hair is black but my brow powder and pencil are a gray/slate color.  The lighter shade will look less harsh on your face then extremely dark brows.  I prefer to use both a pencil and a powder together.  The pencil is used to fill in the gaps and the brow powder is used over the entire brow to darken it slightly.  The spoolie brush is very important to use after applying pencil or powder to brush the color out and blend it in so it looks more natural and remove any stroke marks.

Spoolie brush, brow pencil, angled brush, brow powder

Before you start, map out your brow shape.  Here I am just using the end of my spoolie brush and showing you where your brow should start and end, and where the highest part of the arch should be.  When you pluck your own brows, keep in mind that thinner brows make you look OLDER.  Slightly fuller brows are more youthful so be sparing in your plucking, just pluck the stray hairs that are outside of your natural brow line and avoid overplucking and drawing them back in.  It's not flattering, trust me.

Your brow should start at the line that is matched up with the outside tip of your nose, it should end on the same angle as the outside corner of your eye, and the arch should be highest at the angle that goes through your pupil from the edge of your nose.  You can mark these points with a bit if brow pencil and wipe away the mark when you are done if it helps.

Before you start filling in your brows, use the spoolie or brow brush to brush your brow hairs both upward and downward, looking to see which way looks best for your brow shape.  You don't want to pluck away everything before you do this, one of those stray hairs may just need to be combed into the right shape!  Avoid over plucking from above your brow, the natural arch usually is the best look, just clean up underneath and keep things fuller toward the inner corner with a gentle taper to a thinner outer corner.

Using your brow pencil, and light short strokes, fill in any sparse areas that you need, then use the angled brush and brow powder to lightly darken up your entire brow.

Use the spoolie again to brush through the brow to blend in the color so it looks natural.

An optional last step is to use a clear mascara to brush through your brows and keep them in place.  This may be a good idea if your brows are particularly thick and unruly but I usually skip this step.