Big heavy eyebrows. You either love them or you hate them. While some people go to extreme lengths to achieve the perfect 'scouse brow' others find them repulsive and slug-like. At the moment defined eyebrows are a trend, they define the face and make putting on your eye make-up a whole lot easier!
My eyebrows are naturally blonde, and I mean bleach blonde to the extent where they are invisible against my pale skin. For the past few years I have been using eyebrow pencil on a daily basis just to give myself some sort of visible eyebrow. Have you ever seen one of those pictures of celebrities with their eyebrows photoshopped out? They were sailing around the net a few months back. That's what I look like with no pencil on my brows.
(An example of me with some badly drawn on eyebrows)
Anyway, a few months ago I started having a regular tint and wax treatment. I would go to the beautician and she would apply a warm coating of wax to my brow area and then apply a small piece of paper and then rip it off painfully. Then she would make up a solution of dye in a little tub and then apply it carefully to my brow area. Although I was always pleased with the results, I would have liked my brows slighly darker. You see I was born a natural blonde, but when I was around ten my hair started to fade, first to a sandy colour then to the mousey colour it is now. I wanted my brows to match my root hair colour and they didn't, and I found that I was still using my pencil regularly after I'd had my brows tinted. And what was the point in that? My tint and wax had cost me £8 and lasted about a fortnight, my pencil cost me £1 and lasted me months!
The problem is that I'm not too good with an eyebrow pencil, and when I'm wearing it I'm always conscious that My brows are not even, that one is thicker than the other, that's they're different shapes - that I look like a Russian transvestite. With a small child at home make up isn't my top priority and most days (unless I'm going somewhere special) I could easily do without it, but I'm aware that I look odd going about my daily activities with no visible eyebrows and a head of brown hair highlighted with streaks of blonde.
I searched amazon and after a little scrolling I came across a product that seemed to match my needs and had the customer reviews to back it up. Dyebrow by Eyelure, and at £5 it was a bargain! I clicked the Buy button and a few short days later it was delivered to my home. I was at work when it was delivered, but when I got home I couldn't contain my excitement, I ripped open the box and was ready to have beautifully dyed eyebrows without the salon price or dissapointment.
When I had opened the box the first thing I noticed was the little tools that you are povided with that look more like surgical equipment than beauty utensils, the second thing I noticed was the instruction leaflet, about 8 pages long and covering about the same number of languages. The instructions aren't the best. There's a lot of them for such a small and assumedly simple product and being on paper about the size of two credit cards they were quite hard to read, but I made it through them, quite impatiently.
You have a tube of dye, and a small vial of 'activating fluid'. It's very much like dying your hair. Inside the box is a handy piece of plastic packaging that doubles as a mixing bowl, and you get a little white stick and a small eyebrow brush. First, add 2cm of dye to the mixing bowl (I was confused by this, don't worry. Liquids aren't usually measured in cm are they?). The dye is quite solid and comes out in a thin line so just get a line of about 2cm. Then add five drops of the activating fluid - tricky to do accurately, but don't worry if you go over the five drops, I found that I had to add more anyway to get the mixture to the right consistency.
Then mix the dye and the activating fluid together until they were thouroughly combined and formed a liquid that does not drip. No drips! Dripping is bad! The mixture contains hydrogen peroxide and if it goes into your eyes it will hurt!
When your confident that your mixture is the right consistency the box will tell you to vaseline the area around your brows to avoid dying the skin. I didn't do this and my skin is fine. Then you have to apply it using the white mixing stick (which has a small paddle on the end) and the brow brush. When I tried this it was useless and I would end up brushing it off rather than brushing it in so I just popped some on my brows using the paddle then rubbed it into my brows with my fingers, and then I cleaned my hands.
I had to put two applications on. The instructions advice you to leave the solution on for one to two minutes, and then re-apply if neccesary, leaving the re-application on for no longer than five minutes. Because my eyebrows are so blonde I had an incling that I would need it on for longer, so I left it on for a few extra minutes but I wasn't satisfied with the colour so I did a re-application almost straight after and left it on until I was satisfied. My eyebrows didn't fall out and my skin didn't burn off.
This what I looked like during appliaction. Sorry for the bad quality on the photo and for how awful I look.
Haha! Altough my eyebrows are blonde their naturally quite thick and bushy and I wanted to make sure that I had dyed all the hairs because having darker (and more visible) hairs makes plucking them and tidying them up a lot easier.
This is what my eyebrows looked like after the second and final application. As you can see they are quite dark, which I wanted, but also still quite bushy. I wanted to include this picture so that anybody else with fair eyebrows can see how the dye really picks up every little hair.
I was extremely happy with the result. I had the colour that I wanted, but also the depth that I had failed to achieve using a pensil or having treatments. I just needed to tidy them up. Plucking was painstakingly hard and very time consuming, I would have liked to get a professional wax done but no way was I going past my front door with eyebrows that would make a caveman blush! Then I remembered that I had bought David a facial hair trimmer for Christmas that he had rarely/never used, so off I went to the bathroom and with the utmost caution I took the small electric shaver to my eyebrows. You can but speciallist eyebrow shavers in many stores and I would reccomend using one if these if you are able instead of a man's facial hair trimmer/shaper because they are a lot smaller. The best solution for tidying brows is a professional wax, bit a home wax or a plucking session would still give a neat and tidy result.
This is what my eyebrows look like now. The shape is a lot more natural than it ever was with pencil, the colour is a good match with my natural root colour and the overall result is excellent. If you were to try this product and wanted a fainter result then you could leave it on for less time, or for a darker result you could leave it on for longer, for en extremely dark result you can also buy it in black.
I am now competely happy with my eyebrows and as the pack lasts for up to 12 applications I'm sure I will be for a while. If I ever want a more dramatic look I can always dig out the old eyebrow pencil to enhance the colour and depth that the eyelure has given me, but I will not be returning to the salon any time soon!
I would definately reccomend this product to others, not only is it fantastic value for money, it's also completely worth while, fairly easy to use (when you get your head around the instructions), quick to apply and it gives excellent results. I will be investing in a new box when mine run's out!
Afterthought - Don't pluck or wax your eyebrows before using this product, as your pores will be open and it will probably sting you!
