A whole fucking dissertation on eyebrow products for blondes and redheads, plus a mini review of L'Oreal Voluminous Butterfly mascara (photo-heavy post)

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So this is the latest installation of a quasi-series in which I pull out all the products I have in from single category and try to decide what I should keep and what I should get rid of. Spoiler: I decided that I'm going to keep all of my eyebrow shit, because it's practical and really won't ever expire, so I'll use it up eventually. I did come to the radical conclusion that I should stop buying more, though. Duh.

All my eyebrow products (top to bottom): NYX Eyebrow Cake Powder in Auburn/Red; e.l.f. Studio Eyebrow Kit in Light; Milani Brow Tint Pen in Natural Taupe; CoverGirl Brow and Eye Makers in Soft Blond; Avon Ultra Luxury Eyebrow Pencil in Blonde; and Benefit Gimme Brow in Light/Medium. 

My hair color over the last few years has run the gamut from blonde-blonde to strawberry-blonde to dark-blonde to red to really-fucking-red. Some of the products below have served me well no matter my hair color, such as the e.l.f. kit and the Avon pencil. Others, like the NYX kit and the CoverGirl pencil really only well with certain hair colors - but then they work very well.

You can tell from the photo above that almost every brow product I have has been well used, so I know them intimately. Look at those stubby pencils! The one exception is Benefit's Gimme Brow, which I got as a graduation present in May. It actually came from the Benefit vending machine in the Minneapolis airport. That's a thing that exists.

In the past, when I thought about my minimum makeup - like what I'd wear if I was running out the door and only had time for a couple of things - it was always just mascara and blush. Maybe under-eye concealer. Lately, though, I feel like I can really take or leave those things so long as I've filled in my eyebrows a little. They're fairly invisible on their own, and as I've pointed out before, they really do make a difference.

I used to use the sort of technique where you define the bottom edge of the brow completely and then fill the rest in, but recently I've much preferred Lisa Eldridge's method of focusing on the peak of the arch and working lightly out from there. (If you have never watched a Lisa Eldridge video, do it some day when you're in a bad mood or stressed - trust me, she's so soothing.) This method really does create a more natural-looking effect. I do fill in the part closest to my nose more than she does, however, because that's where the hair on my brows is the lightest and thinnest. If I don't add a little extra there, my eyebrows look too far apart - I think they still do sometimes, honestly, but I'm not (yet) totally comfortable filling in where there's no real hair at all. Anyway, as you can see in the photos below, this isn't the super-defined and polished look that you tend to see in closeups of dramatic eye makeup. It doesn't look flawless. Super-defined is pretty, but it's just not what I'm going for. My brows might look a little less than perfect in a super closeup, but no one is looking as closely as my camera is getting in these photos - and the lack of perfection is what makes them look natural, I think. Here's what they usually look like at a normal distance (scroll down).

I hope you have a couple of weeks to read the rest of this post, because as usual I am long-fucking-winded.

Fix Your Face: Milani Brow Tint Pen

When I bought this a couple of weeks ago and tried it that night, I was super excited to review it, because it was AMAZING.


Then the next morning I used it again so that I could take photos … and it wasn’t quite so amazing anymore.

What I really liked about it the first night was how saturated and inky it was. By the next morning it seemed like it had completely dried out, and I was pissed.

It turns out it wasn’t actually dry, and I figured out that the trick to getting it to work is that you have to set it upside down for a few seconds to get the tint to flow to the tip before you use it. They say to store it horizontally to make it last. And then you have to kind of hold it bottoms up while you’re using it to keep it flowing, which can be awkward.

Anyway, having figured out how to make it work, I do still like it. What I especially like about it is that, since it’s a thin liquid, it actually darkens the hair on my eyebrows, instead of just coloring the skin behind them like most powders (and even pencils) do. I have invisible blond eyebrows, so this is great. It does add color underneath to fill in gaps too, and it’s nice and precise. Plus it lasts all day and then some. I still have eyebrows when I go to bed at night! It costs $6.