mua tinted brow mascara: £2 | collection eye definer: £2.79 | e.l.f. eyelash & brow wand
Showing posts with label eyebrows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eyebrows. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Wednesday, 19 November 2014
mua brow define tinted brow mascara
mua brow define: £2 (available at superdrug, not currently online)
if you read my blog, you'll know how much i adore the elf eyebrow treat and tame, but while i was browsing superdrug a few weeks ago this brow offering from mua caught my eye and i couldn't not pick it up at £2. when i initially picked this product up i was desperate to love it, simply because the elf offering can often be hard to get your hands on as it frequently sells out online and then doesn't reappear back in stock sometimes for months on end, so to have a cruelty free, affordable option readily available for me on the high street would be a god send for the times where i may find myself without my beloved elf product!
my excitement was short lived however after i was horribly disappointed with this product after its first use. i wasn't sure if it was me being clumsy or the product being too wet, but i found that i ended up with more product on the skin around my eyebrows rather than on the eyebrows themselves, which made for a big ol' mess instead of the perfectly defined, bushy looking brows i was aiming for. despite being disappointed, i persisted with using the product then for another two weeks, desperately trying to force myself to at least like it, and after spending a while with less than satisfactory brows, things seemed to pick up a little. fast forward two weeks and the product was applying pretty much perfectly, giving me the brows i desired and so often achieved using my elf product, which made me think that perhaps it was the formula of the product which was a little bit too wet to start with, and that it simply needed to dry out a little before it could reach its full potential, much like a lot of mascaras.
if i'm being perfectly honest, while this product does the job now its had the chance to dry out, i still think i'd choose the elf option over this because it has a much easier wand to work with. this mua offering has a smaller wand which decreases in size to a fine point, whereas the elf wand is all one thickness, which helps to give a more even, all over coverage and requires much less precision to use, which is perfect if you're a bit of a klutz like i am! while i'll be firmly sticking with my elf offering on a permanent basis, i won't be throwing this product out either as it'll make a nice little temporary replacement for my elf product if and when i should run out of it in the future. that said, for £2 you really can't go wrong with this product as it does the job and won't break the bank.
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
four tips for growing out your eyebrows
i'd like to begin by mentioning that i am well aware that my brows are far from perfect, however if you read my eyebrow journey post back in may you'll know that my brows have been on a very interesting journey since i began messing around with them back in late 2011, and i'd like to think that they've come out of the whole ordeal in a much better place. i'm still working on thickening my brows up a little and growing the inner hairs so i don't need to rely so much on powder to give them the illusion of thickness, and below i'll be sharing the tips that've gotten my brows to how they are now, and how i intend to try and further grow them til they look how i desire them to.
one: swap your pencil for a powder
using a pencil to fill in my eyebrows was what led to me slowly plucking them all away. although it's not how they're intended to be used, it's easy to draw your brows in too heavily using a pencil, leading to extremely thick, dark and unnatural looking brows, which obviously then pushes you to pluck them away until filling them in then leaves them looking an acceptable thickness, which in turn leaves you with scraggly, barely there natural brows (which probably isn't a good luck for anybody.) it's a vicious cycle.
swapping to a powder was the best thing i did for my brows because it helped me get used to a more subtle, natural looking brow that relied on thicker natural brows rather than resented them, and slowly but surely i got used to my brows looking naturally thicker. it's also wise to invest in a good, small angled brush to fill your brows in with because it'll help you to fill them in perfectly and avoid going ott as you once did with your brow pencil. i'm currently using the real techniques detailer brush with the b. vivid eyeshadow in cinnamon to fill my brows in and they do the job wonderfully.
two: gradually reduce your plucking
if you're as obsessed with plucking your brows as i was when mine were at their most sparse, i understand that it's hard to let them grow out and go wild for a little while, but it's totally necessary if you're to grow them back to their former selves. i began by restricting myself to plucking once a week, then twice a week and so on until now where i only really pluck them when there are nasty, thick stragglers hanging around way below my brow.
as a rule i tend to not pluck the inner corners or above my brow at all, but exceptions are made if i'm starting to grow a slight monobrow. to keep my inner corner hairs at bay, i tend to brush them upwards and give them a quick snip with some small scissors to stop them getting completely out of control and attempt to keep some kind of uniform shape to them.
three: invest in a brow gel with a brush
picking up a brow gel with a brush completely changed the way i filled, plucked and felt about my brows. previous to using a brush gel, i used vaseline over my brows to set them in place for the rest of the day – meaning the hairs were then pushed to follow the shape of my brow, in a sort of 45 degree angle – and meant i was still somewhat obsessed with the 'drawn on' eyebrow look, but introducing a brow gel into my routine helped me to embrace the natural, bushy brow look, which in turn helped me to embrace my (what would've previously been unruly) brow growth. the brow gel i've been used is the e.l.f. treat & tame and it's been fantastic; it also comes in four shades so there's probably something to suit everyone!
four: make a brow wand your best friend
following on from point number three, an eyebrow wand can come in just as handy as a brush gel in helping you embrace the natural brow look. brushing through your brows with your fingers isn't quite as precise as using a brush, so giving your brows a good brush through before applying any products helps you to realise your natural shape and so comes in handy for shaping and grooming as well as enhancing them. i currently use the e.l.f. eyelash and brow wand and give my brows a good brush through morning and night to check up on their growth progress and whether or not they're growing a little out of shape and may need a little taming.
my eyebrows have become an important part of my beauty routine, and as such i probably feel a little too strongly about their wellbeing nowadays, but i thought it'd be nice to nip by and share the love just in case some of you guys were trying to grow your way out of a nasty eyebrow rut (and boy, don't i understand how nasty they can be!) as always, if you have any cruelty free eyebrow product recommendations or some helpful tips or advice, please feel free to drop them below in the comments!
Saturday, 10 May 2014
my eyebrow 'journey'
left: before the brow obsession kicked in | right: lightly filled in with powder
left: in comes the eybrow pencil, very heavily! | right: the beginning of the plucking, gulp
left: even more plucking, eep! | right: the introduction of powder again, ahh
my eyebrow 'obsession' began in late 2011, and since then has fuelled the relentless plucking, filling in, growing and general aggro that has surrounded them. regardless of my naturally sparse brows, i'd like to think that over the last few years i've learnt a trick or two about playing the old deception game that is filling them in, however devastating it's been for my poor brows on occasions. i'd like to think i've come out of the experience a little bit wiser, knowing that powders are the best for natural looking brows and also encourage growth, and pencils, for thin brows, are somewhat catastrophic and encourage the downwards slope that is attacking your brows until there's not much left to achieve the drawn on, sharp look that a pencil is often only really any good for; of course, everybody has their own brow tool preferences, but i soon tired of the blatantly drawn on look.
three years on from the start of my obsession and i'm happy with my eyebrows' progress. god bless 'em, they're getting there, and i'll now continue to nurture and care for them until they're as thick and majestic as my genetics and trickery allow me to achieve.
i hope you've had a little bit of a giggle along to this, but also, if you're relatively new to the eyebrow taming game, i hope you may also have taken a bit of knowledge away about how over plucking your eyebrows is bad. trust me, if you don't believe me now, you will once you've plucked them all away! surprisingly, i've never actually stumbled upon any of these posts on any of the blogs i read, so if you choose to share your own 'eyebrow journey', please leave me a link to it so i can check it out! i frequently have this chat with a friend of mine and it always leads to fits of giggles, so why not look a little silly for a moment and spread a bit of laughter?!
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
where have you been all my life?! e.l.f. eyebrow treat & tame
if you'd have asked me this time last year what i thought of my eyebrows right now, i'd have raised an eyebrow and told myself i looked like an owl (you know, the little pointy hairs above their eyes?!) and set to work plucking away the unruly bushy hairs growing towards the inner corner of my eyes. fast forward a year and thank god my eyebrow point of view has drastically changed! it was around this time last year that i began using powder to fill in my eyebrows rather than a pencil as i'd grown tired of the super precise, false looking brows, and wanted to go for something a little more natural looking instead, and with that, naturally, i started to grow back my beloved brows.
a year on and i'm well on my way to having the brows i desire, however they're still very much a work in progress. those pesky owlish inner hairs that once were plucked before having the chance to see the light of day now simply just don't grow fast enough for my liking, and thanks to the e.l.f. treat & tame, i can now fake my way to a more bushy, fuller looking brow.
i picked the treat & tame up on a whim while browsing the NYC e.l.f. store after seeing a load of bloggers raving about other brow gels such as the maybelline and benefit ones, but little did i know just how much of a positive effect it was going to have. just after moisturising on a morning, i use the 'treat' side of the tube all over my brows with particular attention paid to the inner corner, and then do the same again every night. i don't really know if the gel's doing any good, but i figure since it's there i might as well use it. once i've filled in my brows with powder, i set to work on them with the 'tame' side of the tube, brushing the hairs upwards to set them, add a little extra colour and give them more of a bushy, full appearance that nowadays i just love. i understand everyone's eyebrow preferences differ, but since using this product i've completely fallen back in love with my brows now i can pretend that i've been blessed with thick, bushy brows... or something like that.
i cannot rave enough about this product and will most definitely be repurchasing it for a mere £3.95. if you're a bushy brows fan yourself, i would definitely, absolutely, positively recommend giving this a go; i can't say for certain as i haven't tried them, however i imagine it does pretty much the same job as the maybelline and benefit options, however it's a fraction of the price and cruelty free (hint hint), so why the hell not?!
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