Make-up Tip: Eyebrow Shaping Tricks
In a previous article we defined and showed how to tweeze and shape what is called the classic brow. It’s a timeless and elegant look but it doesn’t work perfectly for everyone. Sometimes the classic brow look is better when it’s tweaked just a bit so that it fits in with the rest of your facial features.
There are some easy changes that you can make when tweezing your eyebrows and like anything to do with eyebrow artistry, they should be incorporated sparing. The most important thing is to not do anything too drastic and instead, shoot for subtle and natural looking changes. The reason, is that you don’t want your eyebrows to grab all the attention because they’ll just look silly - the real focus should be centered on your eyes. Your eyebrows are just the frame around the painting.
Common eyebrow problems
The most common problems that people have with the shape of their eyebrows have to do with just the eyebrows alone. These are best solved by following the classic brow guide as mentioned above. There are four different things that you might encounter:
- Thick brows. This is easily identified as the stray hairs that grow in the crease area below the brow line and just above the eyelid. Thick brows make your eyes look smaller and more closed.
- Brows that are too long. If you have stray hairs out around the outer corner of your eyebrows they can tend to make your eyes look droopy. It creates a look of sadness or melancholy and can make your eyes appear older.
- The uni-brow. With too many stray hairs across the bridge of your nose, two brows can look like one single brow. This creates a stern or angry expression and it also makes your eyes appear close set.
- Rounded or high brow arches. High or overly rounded eyebrow arches leave excessive space in the crease area of your eyes. It makes your eyes appear smaller, but more significantly it creates a facial expression that makes you look quizzical or stunned, just as if you raised your eyebrows after being surprised.
Fitting your eyebrows in with your facial features
To start with the classic eyebrow and then customize it just right, you need to look at your own facial features. There are six different facial features and you might encounter one, two, or even three of them. With a little tweezing in the right places, you’ll have the perfect classic brows that are custom shaped just for you:
- High forehead. To compensate for a high forehead, tweeze out one or two extra rows at the bottom of your eyebrows to elevate the arch slightly (area A in the picture). The extra space in the crease of your eye will help balance everything out.
- Low forehead. This is where less tweezing is better. Other than the odd stray hair, you don’t want to tweeze above the brow line, so to compensate, keep the arch low and leave in an extra row or two at the bottom of your eyebrows (area A).
- Round face. If you arch the eyebrows slightly higher, you can create a look that gives more length to your face. Similar to having a high forehead, take out one or two extra rows at the bottom (area A). If you have a round face and a high forehead, then you might consider taking out three or four rows at the bottom of the brows.
- Long face. As with having a low forehead, you want to keep the arch low and leave in a couple extra rows of hair at the bottom of your eyebrows (area A).
- Close set eyes. Tweeze a couple of extra hairs at the beginning of the brow to create more space between your brows (area B).
- Wide set eyes. Leave in a couple of extra hairs at the beginning of the brow to create less space (area B).
As you can see, sometimes a little extra tweezing is needed, and sometimes, a little less is the way to go. Either way, minimal tweezing is always better - the last thing you want to do is sit around and wait for your eyebrows to grow back after getting a little too tweeze-happy.
