Brows 101- Feat. Guest Blogger Kaylin

Brows 101
(As taught by Kaylin, a fellow Delta Gamma)

Hey everybody! I thought I would throw everyone through a loop and switch things up a bit. This isn’t the fabulous Abbey, but one of her sorority sisters! My name is Kaylin, and I’m actually a makeup artist for Laura Mercier Cosmetics. For those of you who haven’t used Laura, she’s fantastic; my personal recommendations are the Tinted Moisturizer (featured in one of Abbey’s posts) and the Tightline technique. But that will be for another time. For right now, I decided to hijack Abbey’s blog to teach you one important fact: never forget about your eyebrows!

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed as a makeup artist, it’s that most don’t pay any attention whatsoever to their brows. Now, I’m not saying you need to go out and have half of your face waxed off; what I’m saying is that spending the extra few minutes on your eyebrows will pull your entire makeup look together. You’ll need three things for this:

1.     Eye(brow) Pencil

2.     Eye(brow) Powder

3.     Concealer

I’m using the Anastasia Brow Duo Pencil; it’s both a highlighter and a pencil in one. But any pencil will do. The important thing is that you pick a color that is somewhat close to your natural hair color. It doesn’t have to be exact, mind you – many people’s eyebrows are naturally one to two shades off. The pencil is for creating the hair; so the trick is to do small, quick movements to fill in any sparse-ness (if that’s a word…) in your brows. For example, mine are sparse in the beginning and the end.

Next is the brow powder. You can use a powder that’s specifically made for brows, or you can use a matte shadow that’s close to your hair color. However, I would go slightly lighter than the shade you would normally pick; your natural oils in the brow hair will darken the powder a little bit. Personally, I opted for the eyeshadow: I’m using Charcoal Brown by M.A.C. Take a small amount of powder with an angle brush (I use the #10 brush from Sephora) and simply fill in the brow. Really simple, right? Right. Okay. Moving on.

Well, sorta. If you want, you can stop with the powder. On days I’m not going to work or going out, I’ll stop there. But the point of the concealer is to make the brows look neat and extremely defined. I especially like to use it in between waxes, when those awful little hairs start to sprout up again. It covers it well. Take a small concealer brush and outline your brows (or what you want defined), like so.

  I used Laura Mercier’s Undercover Pot #2. If you have the Undercover Pot, you’ll notice that there are two different types of concealer: use the creamy one! After that, it’s simply blending! Because it’s really awkward to have an outline on your face. If you’re going to use this trick like I do, just use a touch more concealer over the small hairs and they’re unnoticeable (unless you’re staring right at it, and in that case, it’s just weird).

Ta da! Your brows are done. Here are my before and after pictures, with full makeup (sans brows) in both. Like I said before, you don’t need to spend a whole lot of money or time on your brows. But a little bit will make a difference! 

And, for those who are interested, these are the products I used today!

·      Laura Mercier Foundation Primer

·      Laura Mercier Oil Free Tinted Moisturizer in Nude

·      Laura Mercier Undercover Pot #2

·      Laura Mercier Eye Basic in Cotton

·      Laura Mercier Cream Shadow in Alloy (all over the lid)

·      Laura Mercier Shadow in Pewter (outside corner)

·      Laura Mercier kohl eye pencil in Antique Jade

·      M.A.C. blush in Blushbaby

·      M.A.C. bronzing powder in Golden

·      Anastasia Go-Brow duo

·      M.A.C. shadow in Charcoal Brown

Happy face-painting, everyone!

<3 Kaylin