WAX SHMAX! The after affects of eye brow waxing !

Good morning beautynistas and happy Monday to you all.  Also, in case any of you hadn't noticed (like myself), it's December..What the whaa??  Where does the time go??

How many of you ladies out there used to wax your brows??  Or worse, still wax your brows? STOP NOW!  I am all for waxing every other part of my body, but I must tell you, keep the wax off your face!  I used to wax my brows once a week while working in the salon because it was easy maintenance, and ..well....it was free.  Huge mistake!!  I was in to the whole skinny brow trend that looked as if I had just taken a pencil and drawn an arch above my eye.  If you are judging me, stop now, because I know most of you know exactly what I am talking about.  I know I am not alone in this because a friend of mine, Ashley Meyer-Carter, reached out to me and asked how to correct her very own brow disaster, and in my response to her I decided to let you all in on the same secret.  So for this article, you can thank Ashley!

First of all, the reasons why waxing is so harsh on your facial areas are unlimited.  For starters, you are literally ripping layers of your skin off.  Now the face tends to have fewer layers than the rest of our bodies anyway, which is why we tend to start aging first in our faces.  So why strip layers away ourselves??  Waxing can also leave redness and irritation which can cause infection and scarring.  Still not convinced to make the switch??  Well continuous waxing can also permanently damage the hair follicle, causing individual hairs to never grow back.  Well you may be thinking "well if the hairs don't grow back then I won't have to wax as much so that's awesome right?"  Wrong!  That's only awesome if you never plan to change the shape of your eyebrows again..ever.  And like I learned the hard way, just like many hair and makeup trends, eye brow trends come and go.  Though they tend to only have slight modifications, they do still change.  I now have a small spot in my left eyebrow that will just not grow back, and the ends of my brow are forever thinned and need to be filled in daily.  So like I told Ashley, I wanted to give you guys a few tips as well on how to correct these problems.

The first tip was to obviously, stop waxing.  I suggest threading and tweezing over waxing any day!  These two techniques are done at a much slower pace, and there can be no quick and direct disaster..aka- waxing your whole brow off.  Threading is really good at getting all stray hairs and you can get the best and most precise shape from this technique.  You can then tweeze in between your thread sessions for maintenance.  Now some of you say that this is too painful, but I promise you, you get used to it and it is just not as bad as people make it out to be.  Threading can also be done around the lip and chin area for those of you that are concerned or have issues about that.

If the damage is done and you, like me, have spots in your brow that won't grow back, you can try other measures.  Try a product like Latisse or Revitalash.  These are both products that are intended for your lashes and there are still speculations on whether they are safe enough to be used that close to your eye.  But for your brow, they are great!  Use it sparingly and only apply it to the areas where you want to grow the hair back in.  If you get any irritation or allergies, stop using it immediately.  This will hopefully help to grow in those stray hairs and allow you to get that full shaped brow that we are all striving for these days.

You can also use a pencil or brow brush to fill any areas that you are still working on.  I personally prefer a powder filler applied with a brow brush.  This gives you a softer finish that tends to look more natural.  If you choose to use a pencil though, try to pick a color that is a shade lighter than your brows.  Apply the pencil in small gentle strokes in the direction the hair grows, the pencil marks will then blend easier and mock real hairs.  Do NOT just draw lines in to your brow horizontally!  Anastasia Brow products, sold in Sephora, are great for brow pencils and powders.  A perfect brow will start directly up from the inner corner of your eve, will arch in a diagonal line starting from your nose and directly outward, and end in a diagonal line from the outer corner of your eye.  Now I know that sounds confusing, so please reference the image above for a drawing demonstration.

I hope this helps you guys out a little bit.  And just remember, a thicker brow is a happier brow and like a friend of mine once told me..They are sisters, not twins, they will never look exactly the same!  Once you accept that fact you will be much happier with your arches :)

Until next time beautynistas...
xoxo
Cas