DRUGSTORE PICK: Brows
Brows is kind.
Brows is smart.
Brows is important.
Too far? Nope. Brows frame your face, bring structure to your eye-area and are a natural accessory. If you're not utilizing them, let me help you out.
A full, freshly groomed and filled-in brow will maximize your eye area as a whole. In fact, if you plan on doing your eye-makeup with shadows, liners and mascara, but SKIP out on brows, you're robbing your face of it's frame! I once had another artist say to me..."If you take the time to put your eye makeup on but don't finish it off with a good brow, it's like taping a photo to the wall instead of framing it." Well said.
When filling-in my own brows, I stand on two non-negotiable products. I absolutely need a brow pencil, (it can be twist-up or the normal sharpening type,) and a brow gel to set them after they're filled in. The pencil creates the shape, fills-out an over-tweezed brow, adds to a sparse area and the brow-gel is basically just like hair-gel. It'll hold your brow hair in the right position, all day!
In lieu of MUWM Drugstore month, I picked up three different brow products to review. Two of them wooed me and I'll use them for ages. The other, was AW-FUL. Let's start from the bottom.
3. NYX's Eyebrow Push-Up Bra: Retails for $7-9:
At first glance, it looked promising. As a thick double-sided pencil, one side offers what most brow pencils would; an ash-brown shade for shaping and filling-in. On the other side of the pencil, a soft shadow-pencil type of brow highlight to be used directly under the brow. (I LOVE this concept. Having an attached highlighter is so easy, convienient and vital to makeing your brow pop in the way it's supposed to.) My largest complaint is the actual brow color and side of the pencil. It's SO dry and so hard to the touch. This defnitely isn't required but I allllways furiously use a pencil on the back of my hand to warm it up before I apply it on my face for the first time. When I attempted to do this with the NYX Eyebrow Push-up Bra, it HURT my HAND. Bad. Despite my most desperate attempts to soften it up in order to be able to even make my brow look relatively normal or soft whatsoever, it would not work. Trying to apply this hard and this dry of a pencil on your brows practically guarantees you brows that look too drawn-on and VERY unnatural. On top of that, the color looked almost like a standard Number 2 pencil vs a natural brow color. I hunted through every color option and found only one! I am bummed to say, this product gets a serious thumbs down.
2. Sonia Kashuk Brow Defining Pencil: Retails for $6-7:
This pencil looks pretty basic. It sharpens like any other pencil, comes in two or three shades, (I used Haze!) its highly-heat resistant (which is another word for long-wear,) and is super soft to the touch...which is basically the opposite of the prevous pencil. Applying this to the back of my hand, but more importantly my brows, is SO easy because it glides on so smoothly. I have purchased pencils at Nordstrom for anywhere from $22-46 and I can CONFIDENTLY say that I would never know that this is much different. Until I wash my face at night, this product stays in place all day. The only add-on necessary might be a brow-gel, which is completely based on preference. Which leads us to...
1. Maybelline Brow Drama: Retails for $6-8
Have unruly brow hairs on one or both sides?? (One of mine basically grows straight down as in...if I let them have their way, I'd have reeeeeal eye-bangs.) A brow-gel for me not only tames the unruly hair, but it sets the shape for the entire day and keeps your brow right where you want it. I purchased the clear color, as I prefer to fill mine in with the pencil before I set it. Many might want to skip that step and pick-up a colored brow gel. Either way totally works! I just find that if I rely soley on a wet-gel, I don't get the precision of the pencil and I loooooove my brows with a solid shape!!
And there you have it: THE longest Drugstore Post to date.
Try it, love it, tag me! Xx
