Anastasia Eyebrow Products

So I've always been one to say that the eyes are the best feature... after all, a smile isn't really a smile until it reaches your eyes, is it?? But what I have also discovered as of late is that your eyebrows, while not so impressive on their own, make a HUGE difference for your overall look and expressions. They say that the reason dogs are more expressive than cats (and why cats tend to look generally more psycho, as Lotus can attest to), is because dogs have eyebrows and cats don't. Interesting factoid, huh?



Anyway, I digress. So, eyebrows. We all go through the fairly regular torture of waxing/tweezing/threading/<insert your masochism of choice here>. But what we don't always do (or at least I didn't, maybe I'm just completely out of the loop here), is the basic daily grooming. Now, I know I can't be the only Desi chick in the world that wakes up with mad scientist eyebrows (and no, it doesn't have anything to do with my being an enginerd, har har). See picture below. That tends to be how my eyebrows look when a) I wake up, b) I get out of the shower, c) it's 2 pm, etc. You get the drift.

AAAAHHHHH

So I recently picked up the products below at Dillards when I was on travel.

Left: Anastasia Brow Powder Duo in Strawburn
Right: Anastasia Brow Fix

Unfortunately, being on travel for work, it's always a mad house, so even though I tend to buy all kinds of random stuff when I'm out there (so much better shopping!!), I don't really have much time to experiment with anything. So these two products came back home with me unopened, and I finally decided to give them a whirl a couple of weeks ago.

Talk about completely floored.

Anastasia Brow Powder - So, being Indian, I've never really thought I've had a sparsity of hair anywhere. Honestly, I think all my Desi chicks out there will agree that the person that invented waxing deserves a Nobel Prize. But a few weeks ago, when I finally busted out these products and took a good, close look at my eyebrows, I had revelation.

My eyebrows are balding.

Holy guacamole. This was not something I had ever even considered possible. I mean, we're always trying to get rid of the excess eyebrow hair, right?? But apparently, all the years of tweezing/waxing/threading have taken their toll, and I'm left with patches of no-hair-ness littered throughout my eyebrows. Gah.

So, eyebrow powder to the rescue! Luckily, the sales assistant at Dillards had insisted that I buy a powder that matched the caramel highlights in my hair. At the time, I was skeptical (not just of the color, but the whole eyebrow powder endeavor... if only I knew), so I chose the compact that also had a slightly darker brown color. I don't have an eyebrow brush (or I should say, it's been repurposed for other means), so I just used my smallest eyeshadow blending brush and went to town on my eyebrows. I used the lighter powder over the entire length of my eyebrows and concentrated the darker powder in some of the sparser areas.  

The result....

I swear, even though it's such a subtle difference, I'm pretty sure it took about 3 years off my age. And the SA at Dillards was totally right, the lighter shade does wonders. I've never seen any tutorials on how to apply it, but I just made sure I really got between the hairs with my brush (which means brushing them backwards a little bit sometimes, you can fix them when you're done). Magic.

Anastasia Brow Fix - So, now that we've gotten past the balding part, we now address the mad scientist issue. No one shies away from using hair products to keep their hair in place, right? So why not allow your eyebrows the same luxury?? Okay so I totally agree that the concept of eyebrow gel is kind of weird. In fact, just thinking about it makes me chuckle. But this pencil is a good alternative. It's a wax pencil which, when applied lightly to your eyebrows, actually holds them in place for a fairly long time.

In the above picture I've got the eyebrow powder on and have used the brow fix pencil over it. It does take off a little bit of the powder, but you can always reapply that. I like to do the powder first, since the powder application tends to make your eyebrows look even goofier, and then use the brow fix to get everything in place.

Daily eyebrow grooming!! It takes all of 1.5 extra minutes in the morning, and such a huge difference!! It's worth it ladies!!

Anastasia Brow Powder
Pros - Well, you saw the pic.
Cons - There's a good bit of fallout, so it's better to do this first before doing your eye makeup so it doesn't ruin it. Also, be careful not to mess with your eyebrows much during the day as it can smudge.

Anastasia Brow Fix
Pros - Again, you saw the pic. It's got pretty good staying power throughout the day.
Cons - Be careful to apply this with a light hand, as it gets kind of clumpy if you put too much on at once.