Review: Eylure Shape & Shade Brow Pencil & Tamer Medium to Light Blonde

Eyebrows are insanely important to me. You’d be surprised at how much difference the shape and shade of your eyebrows can make to your whole face.

source

Okay, a tad extreme – but you see my point?

Whenever I get my brows threaded (post here) I’m always shocked at how much wider my eyes look, and how much brighter my whole face looks. But whilst my brows are thick, they’re slightly sparse in places so I fill them in with a pencil everyday. My go-to pencil is the Sleek Eyebrow Pencil in Brown but I’ve recently been trying the Eylure Shape & Shade Pencil & Tamer*.

I love the built in spoolie at the end, it’s so convenient and saves a bit of time searching through my makeup to find one!

I personally don’t think brows should be filled in black, so I use dark browns. The colour itself is perfect for me but is marketed towards medium brunette to dark blonde but I’d say that it could be slightly on the dark side.

The pencil is a lot softer than its Sleek counterpart so I use a gentle hand. It’s also not as waxy so it’s not great for holding brows in place.

I find my brows are quite full in the middle and sparse at the ends, so it’s the ends that I really concentrate on.

The left is just my natural brow and the right is my brow filled in with the pencil.

I personally like the result. It’s very natural without making my eyebrows look like they’re two massive slugs sitting on my face.

I get a great wear out of it, although I do find that my brows don’t look as sharp at the end of the day but this could be down to my oily skin.

Bottom line: I love the convenience of the duo but the pencil isn’t the best and it’s a bit too soft for my liking. I’d be more likely to use this in my makeup bag while as a touch-up while I’m out and about, as opposed to when I apply my makeup in the mornings.

Eylure Shape & Shade Pencil & Tamer comes in three shades and is available from Boots and Amazon, prices start at £5.11.

---

Review: OMG Beauty in Bow Wharf - Mink Lashes & HD Brows

Long post!

It took me a long time to realise that you really do get what you pay for. If something seems too good to be true then it probably is. However, this usually isn’t the case when it comes to Groupon. Always on the look out for a bargain, I’ve purchased many a Groupon and I’ve always been pleased. So when a deal came up for HD Brows and Mink Lashes for just £16 (a whopping 81% off!) I was sold.

After a bit of googling I realised that the deal was also available on KGB Deals and Wowcher as well, so I shouldn’t have been so surprised when I called for an appointment and was given a date more than three weeks later! I tried to wait patiently and grow my eyebrows out but I caved and got them threaded – blogged here – and I’m SO glad I did.

When I arrived at Bow Wharf and found the salon I was immediately surprised at how tiny it was. And when I say tiny I mean teeny tiny. My bedroom is probably bigger than the whole salon which is saying something, as my room is by no means big!

Anyway, after a little wait for my appointment I was led into the appointment… area? The even tinier space consisted of a treatment bed and a trolley with a packet of lashes on top – erm, individual mink lashes appointment, who invited the packet lashes?! I’d watched a couple of mink lash videos on youtube, so I was prepared to be in the claustrophobic treatment … area … for the next 90minutes at least. However, in less than 15 minutes I was ‘done’.

The girl had explained (read: lied) that the individual mink lashes didn’t give a very ‘full’ look, so if I wanted I could have a few clusters put in just to fill them out. I’m not a fan of clusters but agreed, as I didn’t want them to look too scarce. I was told not to get them wet at all – because that’s possible! – or use anything oily on my face, which again seemed impossible as my face is like an oil slick!

Next were my eyebrows, she waxed off the bits of growth on my brow bone and my emerging mono-brow with the world’s hottest wax. Honestly, she could have poured boiling water over my whole face and it would have burnt less. I’ve never had any waxing done on my face though, and didn’t want to look like a Moany Mindy – but I obviously am! – so didn’t exclaim, and luckily it was over very quickly.

After the burning wax she applied the tint. Very dark eyebrows look too heavy set on me and so I opted for a dark brown instead of black. She applied it and then asked me where I was heading next. I thought it was a little strange, I mean we’d covered the usual salon small talk – where I live, boyfriend, job, going on holiday this summer? – so I wasn’t sure how to answer. I soon realised that she wasn’t making small talk, she was asking because I was finished and was expected to remove the tint myself. WHAT? How does that make sense? People don’t go to the hairdressers, get the hair dye applied and just go home! My mum had her lashes and eyebrows tinted once when I was really young and she didn’t remove the tints herself. However, I was a tinting virgin and wasn’t sure whether that was normal now so I didn’t object to a bit of forced DIY.

After a multitude of questions from me and some very unclear answers from her, I still wasn’t sure when I should be removing the tint. The girl didn’t even look 20 and seemed so blasé about the whole thing that I felt like I was in very inexperienced hands.

I was told not to wipe it off for 20minutes, which was later changed to ‘no more than 45 minutes’. Worried I’d look like a circus act I wiped it off 10 minutes after I left the salon.

Looking in the car mirror I was immediately aware of how stupid the lashes looked. She’d used about 10 individual lashes on each eye and then tried to fill them out with clusters, they looked awful. Some were really long, others were short and stuck together, then there were the awful few that were piled on top of each other. It looked at if the person applying them had done it with their eyes closed! However, my eyebrows did look thicker and definitely more defined – this was short lived though, as it turned out the tint had transferred onto my skin so when I washed my face the ‘thick’ look disappeared and my old brows were back.

In a desperate attempt to fix the lashes I decided to trim down the really long ones thinking that it would make them look slightly better. Wrong. Even though I’d hardly moved them, some of the glue had loosened and I now had hard gunk around my eyes that looked like sleep! That, coupled with my Liz Earle rash? Attractive.

When I woke up the next morning my eyes were really hurting. Bits of glue were falling into my eyes and scratching them as I blinked, so I had no choice but to remove them. I rubbed an oil-based cleanser over my face and around my eyes, which helped loosen the lashes so I could pull them out.

Enough talking, here’s what they looked like.

Just so you know, this was during the time of my Liz Earle rash so please excuse the rash on my face!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

THREE HOURS AFTER 'TREATMENT':

So would I go back? HECK NO! Not even if they paid me! I wasn’t the only one who didn’t think much of the treatments at OMG Beauty, here are a few screen grabs of what others are saying on QYPE.co.uk

If you’re wondering what proper mink lashes should look like then here it is:

source

All in all, I’ve learnt my lesson and will not be returning.

However, if you fancy your chances at OMG Beauty then they’ve got another Groupon running. Or you can check out their website here.

Late. Last week in Instagrams #4

I’m sorry this post is so late; I’ve been really busy trying to get my last assignments in at uni!

Last week wasn’t very eventful at all, but here it is …

Made a beauty box for the boy, as he’s jealous of mine!

That’s the last time I let the boy loose in the kitchen. Took us days of scrubbing and it’s still not off!

New Muller yoghurt, mint chocolate chip. Not again thanks.

Diet was getting boring. Yoghurt in a glass – didn’t liven things up at all! Haha

HORRID rash came up on my face – post to follow on this – so I did a Sudocrem facemask! Casper has got nothing on me!

My eyelash extension and brow dye results. Hated. Blog post will also follow.

NANDOS.

Strawberry FroYo in Nandos.

Eyelashes out already. Really painful.

Discount Soap & Glory heaven!

 April GLOSSYBOX. Blogged here.

PO are charging me £15.57 to pick up a package – in their dreams!

Venti Skinny Sugar-Free Vanilla Latte from Starbucks. The only thing that gets me through a day at work!

What did you get up to last week?

My quest for the perfect brow: Eyebrow Threading

Ever since I was 17 I’ve been threading my eyebrows. During my younger years I was very ‘pluck-happy’ but when I got to 17 I realised the error of my ways, and opted to have them done professionally.

(Source)

For those who don’t know what threading is, it’s a procedure where a piece of cotton is twisted into a double thread and that double thread is used to pull a line of hairs out. Weird explanation so here’s a short video:

I’ve recently been trying to grow my eyebrows out as I’ve got a HD Brows appointment on the 24^th. But with a wedding on the 21^st and some friends staying over at the moment I just can’t stand looking like an unkempt werewolf any longer.

I know that my HD Brows procedure will be a lot better if they’ve got more brow to work with but I couldn’t hold out and went to get them threaded this afternoon.

BEFORE

Be prepared, the pictures are gruesome …

There’s no way I could last another two weeks with those bad boys.

AFTER

The woman I usually have wasn’t there when I arrived so I had to get someone else. Not entirely happy with the shape as they usually look a lot better, but anything is better than what was there before!

I’ve filled them in slightly with a pencil, and added some silver to highlight my brow bone.

Threading gives a much cleaner finish compared to waxing and plucking and it’s very quick.

Whenever I mention eyebrow threading the first question people ask me if whether it hurts. Any kind of hair removal involving ripping hair from the follicle is going to hurt. But threading is typically very quick, with both brows done in less than 15-20 minutes.

I tend to wait about 2-3 weeks before returning so hopefully cleaning up my messy brows today will not have had too much impact on my forthcoming HD Brows.

Thumbs up for better brows!

How do you keep your eyebrows in check?