Sunday, April 14, 2013

Best Eyebrow Pencil so far!

Let's begin with my personal history of eyebrows....

Gene-wise, I've been blessed or cursed with very sparse and thin hair, including my eyebrows. I suppose I have the typical Asian sparse eyebrows.

Of course, growing up with a lot of TV watching and magazine reading, I have always been attracted to people with thick, dark, shapely brows.....
Till this day, I dream of marrying a guy with a family of thick eyebrows so that my kids can inherit such looks, haha!

Anyhow, I've tried the fake-eyebrows trick using eyeliners and brow powders, and they never make any sense on my face. Having dark eyebrows seems to make me look weird, mean or angry, instead of sultry and beautiful as the ladies above.

Oftentimes, one looks the best the way nature intended. Over the years, I've learned to accept what I was born with and to enhance that natural uniqueness instead of trying to look like someone else.

So the only thing I need to enhance my sparse eyebrows....is some sort of filler that helps put in some shape.

As mentioned on I am Khatu, most eyebrow liners and powders on the market are BROWN. Asian people don't typically have brown eyebrows. Maybe a few lucky people can get away with using black eyeliner for the brows...but for folks like myself, black is just too dark or bold for the face.

The only solution I can think of is using grey powder or pencil. Unfortunately, finding a simple grey brow powder, grey pencil, or grey eyeshadow (that is matte with no shimmer) is rare! For the longest time since college, I've been using the "soft black/charcoal" powder from Eyebrowz (a website I found while googling the topic), but they don't last a full day on my oily face and the powder gets gritty after awhile, so I have been on the lookout for something better....

Found it! NYX Auto Eyebrow Pencil in Charcoal ($4.50, affordable!)

I love that it is actually grey grey, it is buildable but never gets too dark or black....
Here's how grey it looks compared to a black eyeliner:
 (black eyeliner on left, NYX eyebrow charcoal pencil on right)
Another great thing about this NYX eyebrow pencil is that is stays on the whole day, better than powders. 
This is how natural it looks on my sparse eyebrows:
BEFORE          vs.          AFTER
     
It provides just enough color to fill in some of the sparseness and create shape without overpowering or looking like I have makeup on. 

I highly recommend this NYX eyebrow pencil in charcoal, especially if you have black hair with sparse eyebrows, and wanting to keep it natural! 

What eyebrow products do you use?

5 comments:

eliz said...

Hmmm Will check this out...I use an eyebrow anastasia gel...but I feel like I want a more subtle look.

Emmett Katherine said...

Elizabeth Tsylor had perfect brows. Mine are kinda sprse and I use a combo of pencil and shadow to fill them in.

Anonymous said...

I've been using Cover Girl Perfect Blend charcoal pencil. I haven't tried the NYX line yet, but I will consider giving it a try after your review. I have eyebrows that grow to the side for half the length of my eyebrows, and then the other half of my eyebrows grows in a downwards direction. It's rather odd...and makes it difficult to shape!

Olyvia said...

Eliz, this NYX pencil will do the trick for subtle brows!

Emmett Katherine, thanks for sharing!

QFFS, I haven't noticed anything strange with your brows; whatever you've been doing, it works :) Ooh, I didn't know CG has a charcoal (grey) pencil. The extra advantage with the NYX is that it doesn't require sharpening the pencil (something I'm so lazy about). Yes, definitely give it a try!

granola2glam.blogspot.com said...

Good recommendation. My hair is brown, so I've been using brown pencil, but my friends with almost black hair look great with Charcoal brows. Thanks or mentioning.