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How to shape eyebrows

While eyebrows make shapes to express our ever-changing emotions – quizzically arching a single brow, frowning or raising in surprise – how we choose to shape them is part of the fun of self-expression. They might be subject to changing fashions going from pencil thin to tapered and back to bushy, but your brilliant brows are a big deal as one of the most defining facial features, not to mention protecting your peepers from moisture, dirt and light. Show them a little love and learn how to shape eyebrows at home with our makeup essentials and top tricks.

How to shape your eyebrows at home

In the bigger picture of your face’s makeup, your brows are pretty small, right? But different eyebrow shapes make a big impact. Consider, while they’re a bit of a supporting character among your other features, it’s no less true that when your eyebrows are beautifully shaped and well-groomed you feel more confident and look more put together, more you. Funny how the smallest of tweaks can help you feel so much more on point. All the more reason to learn how to shape your eyebrows yourself. Regardless of being thick, thin or non-existent, get yours looking exceptionally excellent with our eyebrow step by step guide.

Step 1: Define the shape

To master your grooming technique, you need to first find your perfect eyebrow shape before you pick up any tools. This all depends on where your other features sit, namely your nose and eyes. Plus, you should be using your natural eyebrow shape as a guide. After all, this is about looking like the best version of you. Comb one eyebrow with the Duo Eyebrow Brush, then hold a pencil vertically against the middle edge of your nostril, following the bone structure of your nose up to your forehead – that’s where your brow should start. Next, line up the pencil at a slant from the edge of your nostril to the outer corner of the eye – that’s where your eyebrow should end. Your most natural-looking arch would fall mid-way across your eye, following the slanted pencil from the same starting point.

Step 2: Prepare for the plucking

As you would with any other skincare routine, it’s important to prep skin before you start. In fact, around those precious peepers is a particularly delicate area so it’s even more important in your eyebrow step by step. Start off by washing your face with warm water before using our Oils of Life™ Intensely Revitalising Facial Oil on your eyebrow area. Just like any soothing spa experience, although you might go for some hair removal, a massage is never amiss. Use your pinky finger to do your own at-home mini massage on your brows, gently rubbing in the dry oil that’s enriched with three precious seed oils – black cumin oil from Egypt, rosehip oil from Chile and camellia oil from China. After using this luxurious facial oil, your skin will feel moisturised and soothed, helping relax the hair follicles and ready the brow hair to make a move.

Step 3: Use a tweezer

You’re now ready to finesse your eyebrows fret-free. How to pluck eyebrows? Recalling the shape you defined, you should pluck out the hairs that sit outside of this. Using our Slanted Tweezers, for each hair, gently hold the skin in the direction of the hair growth so it feels taut. Place the tip of the tweezer at the root of the hair, get a grip on it and pull! Remember to pluck the hair out in the direction that it’s growing, too. Ideally, you should only pluck out hairs that sit at the bottom of the brow line, as the top of the eyebrows will keep your natural shape intact. Only remove hairs above your eyebrow that really look lost and out of place. Alternate between each of your two brows as your pluck and be sure to regularly stand back at a distance to inspect the two, keeping in mind the saying – your brows should look like sisters, not twins.

Step 4: Fill in your brows

Now that you’ve got the desired shape down, it’s time to fill. Historic over-plucking or naturally barely-there brows might need a helping hand, which is where our Brow & Liner Kit comes into play. Depending on how thick the eyebrow hair is naturally, eyebrow powder helps to fill in between the hairs, helping create a more plumped-up, defined and heavenly hirsute look. How to do your eyebrows in this way? You’ll need to have our Duo Eyebrow Brush plus our Brow & Liner Kit to hand. The brow kit contains two shades of fine texture eyebrow powders, so that you can alternate between shades, creating a more natural look. Use the brush to switch between the two powder shades and build up a flawless finish. The brow kit also comes with a mini double-ended brush for on-the-go touch-ups so you can pop it in your bag for days at work and nights out alike.

Step 5: Fix eyebrows with brow & lash gel

Finally, finish the brows by using our Brow & Lash Gel to fix your newly groomed brows in place. A bit like using hair spray once you’ve finished you ‘do, or our Makeup Setting Spray once your made-up face is finished, this is a multi-tasking makeup bag saviour that helps keep everything looking immaculate and in place. Our transparent gel has a handy applicator to help smooth brows – not to mention lashes that are going sans mascara – and help tame the more unruly hairs, resulting in a more refined, defined look. Simply smooth the wand over your eyebrows in the direction of the hair growth and tease those brow hairs that need a bit of a nudge in the right direction. It helps set the shape you’ve created, whatever that might look like – whether full and fuzzy or trim and tapered.

woman touching her face

Natural eyebrow shapes

Now you’re an expert in how to do eyebrows, let’s look at the different eyebrow shapes. There’s a whole host out there, and certainly eyebrow trends have changed over the decades with the fashion of the era, going from painted on to severely straight, through to curved or flauntably arched, and back again to bushy being all the rage. Whatever your taste, nice eyebrow shapes come in all colours, sizes and forms, like faces and bodies, naturally. We think each and every eyebrow shape is as beautiful as the next. Just as it is with body shapes and makeup palettes, there’ll always be something that suits you best, and it’s all about finding that. So how to know which brow shapes are best for you?

The eyebrows most suited to your visage are likely those that don’t draw attention, they go unnoticed in fact. They’re simply there, doing the great work of making every feature on your face look finely balanced. Ultimately, your best eyebrow shape depends on the shape of your face, working together in perfect harmony, and your natural eyebrow shape. That’s as easy to suss out as looking to see where the majority of your eyebrow hair lies – this will indicate your most suited shape. Natural eyebrow shapes might be arched with a soft angle or a more defined hard angle, they might be rounded or straight, or even S-shaped with a softer curved taper. Of all the features that make up your fine face, your eyebrows are pretty important, huh?

How to find the right eyebrow shade?

This all depends on whether you want to go for your most natural colour or define your eyebrows more strongly. Perhaps your hair colour is dyed, so you want to find a complementary hue that has nothing to do with your natural hair colour. Or perhaps your brows are naturally sparser and lighter than the colour of your barnet and so you want them to get a bit of a boost. Whatever look you’re after, just like finding that hair shade that suits your skin tone, this is about finding the best match for you.

Regardless, for the most natural effect choose brow shades that have the same undertone as your skin and hair – check your veins on the inside of your wrist to find yours. If your veins look more blue they’re cool, if they look more green then your undertone is warm. The same goes for your hair colour – if you have red or gold-looking tinges in your hair, your hair’s undertone is warm. If your hair seems to have more ashy, platinum or lighter-hued tinges, your hair’s undertone is cool.

For a Natural Look

For a natural look, check your genetic hair colour, as this typically matches your eyebrows. If not exactly, it’s likely to be in the same family of shades. But look closer – your hair is made up of lots of differently hued strands, so you should follow the same rule with your brows and mix and match shades to create a 3D and more natural look.

For a Bolder Look

If you want to go a bit darker than your natural brow shade to more deliberately define them and help them frame your face, you might want to go one or two shades darker. This is particularly key if you’ve got blonde hair or if your brow genes means you don’t have a lot of hair to work with. If you have brunette or black hair, you might find that you can opt for a brow shade that’s one or two shades lighter than your hair colour.

Discover the best ways to fill in your eyebrows

Now you’ve learnt how to do eyebrows at home, having found your most natural shades and easy shapes to perfect, we’ve got the ideal makeup products to help you get beautifully filled in statement brows. Whatever your preference for brows, choose from our three types of brow boosters. Eyebrow powder creates a more soft textured effect, helping to add colour to both the brow hair and any gaps in between. Pencils help create a more defined look, as they have a finer tip, and can create a more perfected look than powder, plus help fill in any gaps in the hair. Gels are best if you have fuller brows, as they only coat the hairs themselves. They also help if your brows need something to help keep unruly hairs in place.

Brown Sport Brow Liner Dark Brown

Brow pen

Brow pencils are used to fill in your eyebrows with precise strokes that mimic your own hairs. Our Brow Sport has an angled tip for extra precision, helping to get into the tiny gaps in between the hairs. Apply it in small, deliberate strokes to blend with your brows and build up a more filled-out arch. It’s sweat-proof and transfer-proof so you can be sure that once you’ve defined your brows, your look will last.

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Brow Sculpt 3-in-1 Contouring Pen Medium Brown

Eyebrow powder

Brow powder helps to fill in the spaces of skin that show between the eyebrow hairs, helping your brows appear fuller and more defined. Our Brow & Liner Kit has two shades of fine powder with an in-built double-ended miniature brush. One side has a finely pointed tip, helping you define your perfect shape. The other more angled side lets you build up the two shades in succession, helping create depth and a more natural look.

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Brow and Liner Kit

3-in-1: powder, wax, mascara

Combining the best of a powder, wax and mascara in one easy-to-use contouring pen, meet our Brow Sculpt. It’s designed like a nifty little pen that you’ll never want to be without. With three different ends, each does their own job. Sculpt with the wax end to help draw a natural line and shape the brow. Fill using the powder to help tinge the hairs. Finally, set using the tinted mascara to add volume and finalise your brow look.

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Tips for great eyebrows

Don’t overdo the plucking

Step away from the mirror. As tempting as it might be to keep going, plucking a few too many hairs, even the tiniest ones, can result in a more sparse shape than you’d perhaps first intended. Like cutting a fringe, you can’t put back what you’ve taken away so go slowly and intentionally and be careful not to overdo it.

Mix and Match Shades

Check the hair on your head if you don’t quite believe it. Your natural hair colour is made up of varying shades and when it comes to your eyebrows, just the same. So, for a natural effect when using coloured brow products make sure to use different shades, building up a similar 3D colouring by layering the hues.

Take a Break

While plucking away rogue hairs might be satisfying, there’s no need to take to the tweezers every day. Give your brows a break and let the eyebrow hair grow from time to time before you pluck again. You might just find that your brows look better a little bushier, or basically, a little less perfect. It’s all about the real you.

Natural Light

As obvious as it might sound, the amount of light you are working with will seriously impact what you can see when you’re plucking away. Give your brows the best shot at looking their best by maximising the natural light in your bathroom. Open the blinds, and make sure you’re not squinting through the sunshine. Basically, you’ll be able to properly see what you’re doing.

Brow & Liner Kit

“I love this! I am a natural blonde and have very pale brows so I need something to help them out. This is perfect. It gives great colour without looking unnatural! For anyone with fair hair this is a life saver.”

– BodyshopAddict12

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