
Keep the skin supple
The skin around your eyes is very thin. So before you go tweezer happy at your brows, make sure to moisturize the area properly with a nice, thick moisturizer. You don’t have to slather it, just apply a bit and massage it well into the skin. You sockets and brow bone should look moisturized without being sticky or oily. If you live in a cold climate zone, then its best to tweeze after your shower, when your body still has the heat from the shower. Or use a warm washcloth over your eyes to soften your skin and hair before tweezing.
Invest in a good pair of tweezers
There are obviously several styles of tweezers available in the market, so get one that suits you and makes you feel comfortable. The best suited for tweezing are those with thin slant tips, but you can pick what you like. Don’t use these for anything else (we know people who have used their tweezers to stick small sequins with glue or pry open things and then they wonder why their tweezers are not doing such a good job).
Scissors and brow comb
If your eyebrow hair is long, then you can trim the tops with a sharp scissor. Brush your brow hair in the direction of growth. If any of them are too long on the top, just trim that portion. Again do not go overboard or trim too deeply, as that can spoil your brow shape.
Tweeze in the right direction
When you tweeze, it’s best to pull out the hair in the direction of its growth. It may a bit tricky for you if you are a beginner—especially the opposite side of the hand that you use more—but after a couple of times, you’ll get used to it. This way you minimize the pain of pulling your hair out. If there is very fine hair, raise it up slowly with the tweezers and then pull them out. Make sure to get a good grip on the hair, test the fine hair with a soft pull once if needed, and then yank it out. This way you minimize the chances of pulling at your skin. Not only is pulling at your skin painful, it can also leave an ugly welt or sometimes a scab.
Learn to camouflage
If you’ve ended up plucking a few hair wrong (it happens to the best of us), do not get upset and start balancing the other side by plucking too much hair on that side as well. Why end up with two brows, both badly done? Instead, use an eyebrow filler or a pencil to fill that area and camouflage it till the hair grows back. Tweeze the other side to the normal shape. Just make sure to darken both brows equally even if using a pencil or filler just to cover the bad patch.
Ice it
Once you are done tweezing, if your skin gets bumpy, red or feels a bit raw, just rub some ice on that area. It's the best way to reduce the flare-ups or the redness. But remember; ice it only after you are done with tweezing, never before. You can also apply a soothing moisturizer after icing it, to keep the flare ups to a minimum or settle the ones that are already there.
Few other things to remember
Always tweeze in good light; it's the best way to see the fine hair on your brow line and get them.
Use a magnifying mirror if possible. Again makes it easy to get to all the fine hair. After a few pulls move back to get some distance from the mirror and check how the overall shape looks. Then you can get back to tweezing further.
Don’t overdo it. You never want to end up with two thin misshapen lines for brows. To understand how to shape your brows correctly, you can read this article: http://www.littleredtote.com/component/k2/item/464-perfect-eyebrows
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Written by Fleur Xavier and Nethra Raghuraman on 18th Apr 2014