You may not think about them very often, but no matter your style, eyebrows are a key defining feature. That’s why eyebrow maintenance should be a regular part of your beauty regimen. But you can go too far and end up with an over plucked disaster. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, read this so you don’t make any amateur mistakes.

The Most Common Eyebrow Maintenance Mistakes

Thin, drawn in eyebrows are obviously a thing of the past, but that’s not the only faux pas when it comes to your brows.

1. Attacking your unibrow

Stray hairs tend to pop up between your eyes and plucking them can get addictive. While unibrows can make you look unkept to say the least, you can over pluck. Plucking between your eyebrows can get out of hand and before you know it there’s a gapping hole between your eyes. The start of your eyebrow should be even with your inner eye duct. Once you get to that point, stop plucking.

2. Up close and personal

Don’t get an inch away from the mirror and begin plucking your eyebrows. This can cause you to over pluck because it makes your eyebrows appear larger than they are. Stay close enough to the mirror that you can see what you’re doing but don’t overdo it.

3. Not minding the arch

Some eyebrows have more of an arch than others. But just because your’s isn’t pronounced doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Make sure you work to maintain the arch in your eyes because this helps to define your face.

4. Over tweezing

Don’t end up like one of those ladies that has to draw in their entire eyebrow. As you get older over plucked eyebrows begin to look much worse. If you don’t know what you’re doing, have a professional wax or thread your brows and then stick to maintenance. It’s best to avoid tweezing on top of your brow which is much more likely to become overdone. Stick to underneath your eyebrows at home.

How to Maintain Your Brows

Now that you know what you’re doing wrong, let’s fix it. If you get your brows waxed or threaded, this can be done between treatments. If you want to do it yourself, these steps are key:

1. Get a brow brush.

It’s important to get a brow brush to ensure you know the direction that your brows are growing before you start trimming. This is a tool that really changes your brow maintenance game because eyebrow hairs can grow in all sorts of directions making a uniform brow hard to come by.

2. Use scissors.

While you can pluck the pesky hairs that get out of reach, you should trim your entire brow with special scissors. Be conservative and avoid over snipping. Start small and if you need to go back over them, you can. Brush to the very end of your brow and trim the ends as well.

3. Pluck the strays.

If a few stray hairs appear in your brow arch or between your eyes, carefully get rid of them. But again, avoid plucking too much on top of the eye. Less is always more in this arena.

4. Match your color.

For a quick tip, you want your eyebrow color to match your root hair color. Choose a brow pencil that’s the same color as your roots for a more natural look. When you’re done shaping your brows, highlight them with a bit of your brow color.

5. Gel to keep in place.

For some of you this might be a step too far, but it can be helpful. Use an eyebrow gel to hold your brow in the perfect shape once you’ve got everything in place. Eyebrow hairs can have cowlicks which causes them to fall in different directions.

Which is Better: Eyebrow Waxing or Threading?

Waxing and threading are the most common professional tools for eyebrow maintenance. Threading is likely the lesser known of the two, although it’s undoubtedly catching on. It uses very thin threads crossed and knotted to gently and precisely extract hairs from the brow line or anywhere on the face. The practitioner wraps the thread into sort of a bow tie and then controls the extractions with both hands.

Threading is great for those with sensitive skin and it’s done so close to the skin that the hair doesn’t grow back thicker. It’s also fast, usually taking around ten minutes and it’s inexpensive ($10 to $15) depending on where you live. You can learn to thread your own eyebrows, too, if you’re interested.

While many people still wax their eyebrows or have them waxed professionally, there are drawbacks. If you’re on some medications that cause you to have sensitive skin, it can inflame the problem. If you have generally sensitive skin or dry skin, that too can cause problems for waxers. Not to mention that it can be painful.

The Best Brow Tools on the Market

When it comes to brow maintenance, you don’t need much, but there are a few tools that can make your trim fest easier. BrowGal tools are the best. The brow brush is $14 and the brow scissors are $20. The tweezers are a pricey $28, but to be honest, can you think of anything better than having super precise tweezers to remove those pesky hairs?

Do you maintain your own eyebrows? Have you tried threading or do you wax your brows? Have you ever had an eyebrow disaster? We want to know! Drop us a line via Twitter @EcoSalon.

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For those looking for a less invasive, more natural face lift type experience, read on. For those who are a lot squeamish, prepare to be a teensy bit grossed out. Thread lift may be the new face lift.

More natural, less invasive, practically no recovery time…If you could have anything in a face lift, these would be it. But what is a thread lift and is it one of the new, somewhat weird anti-aging treatments?

Nope. This is not snail venom, bacteria-killing molecules, or some other bizarre beauty trend. We are talking simple needle and thread, here. Ok, maybe not that simple, but still…

The thread lift is a technique where tiny threads, sugar-based and sometimes barbed, are inserted into the skin to give a lifted look. There are a couple of ways to go about doing this procedure, but right now you still have to travel to Europe or Asia to have it done.

One dermy who performs thread lifts (did I mention it is done by dermatologists? It is!) is Maurice Dray from France. Dr. Dray performs his threading procedure using a “specially designed gun” to inject fillers and antioxidants deep into skin tissue in effort to stimulate collagen production. Sugar-based threads are inserted into the skin to give a lifted look. The procedure is said to last two years. As for price? A neck threading would run you just under $2K.

These natural threads melt around 3-4 weeks post insertion. And it’s not just the face that can get in on the action. Pretty much any spot on the body that sags can be threaded. Neck, jawline, breasts, knees…The idea is that these threads create fibrous tissue that (fingers crossed) stimulate new tissue growth.

Dr. Dray has offices in London and Paris, but if you aren’t close to either of those cities, maybe hop on over to Singapore where Dr. Woffles Wu inserts barbed threads (The Woffles Thread) under skin. The barbs give skin a lifted look and create fibrous tissue over time to support the lift. Treatment is said to last one to five years. This version runs about $6000 for a neck lift.

Increased skin hydration, glow, and improved elasticity are other purported bonuses of the thread lift. As for those real life results? Dr. Dray’s patients apparently report a practically unanimous success rate, but studies suggest otherwise.

As weird as having threads run through your skin sounds, there are no side effects to the treatment and very minimal downtime. The worst patients are usually left with is a bruise or two. Certainly not the potential paralysis of Botox or long recovery time from a traditional surgery. A thread lift is also fast (around 30 minutes) and practically painless.

For the time being the treatment is not available state side, awaiting FDA approval. When it is, and you know it will be, will you run to get one? Or leave the needle and thread for sewing on loose buttons?

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Image of woman threading needle via Shutterstock

The post Is the Thread Lift a More Natural Face Lift Alternative? appeared first on EcoSalon.