First of all, my lovely Ana (who happens to have beautiful brows) suggested that I write about them DIY brows.. I have been doing my own for over 3 years now for a few reasons. a) I save money and b) I don’t have to worry about someone else screwing up my beloved brows. I think you will find everything that you ever wanted to know about eyebrow maintenance right here on OH MY GEMINI.

Hang in there– I know this is a long post, but at the end I included some tutorials and great info from InStyle about eyebrow stuff– I think you’ll like it!

Ok, and now, on to brows– Everyone’s take on eyebrows is different. Mine is, the bigger– the better. I have already sat down my young female cousins and lectured them on never tweezing their eyebrows without professional guidance… And then I wonder whether it’s a right of passage for every young girl … accidentally tweezing off most of their brows, only to regret it later in life.

Oh Brooke. What I would do for those huge brows.

Ok. So- True or false.

When you and your best friend were in about 6th grade you took your mom’s tweezers and or scissors from the kitchen and demolished your eye brows thinking they would look cool as skinny brows.

I will forever, vividly remember the day that this happened to me… or shall I say- the day that I did this to myself.

I was in my room, “redecorating” it, for the 5th time that month, which meant I was cutting out pictures from the DELiA*S Magazine and gluing them on my wall with Mod Podge… Relocating this life size paper mache be from Spain (I was obsessed with it) from one spot on my ceiling to another… re-applying glow in the dark stars on top of those that had faded, and all the while humming along to cool 96.7, the oldies station, and the song of choice was either “Great Balls of Fire” or Lollipop”. Oh childhood.

I had accumulated a stack of magazines, for cutting out and wall hanging- I don’t know that was my thing, apparently. I sat there on the floor flipping through endless pages of fashion, style, and beauty, when I noticed the beautiful, skinny, eyebrows, that peacefully rested on every single model’s forehead. I shifted my gaze and readjusted my focus to see myself in the mirror… There they were… caterpillars sprawled across my face. Let me just say that being blessed with having Jewish and Italian genes does ensure that you have thick… eyebrows. In my case, at least.

The more I analyzed my furry little friends, the more ugly I felt. (and OMG what I would do to go back to this moment in time and have just let it go…) but noooo… I crept into my mom’s toiletries and snagged her tweezers… took my scissors out of my crafting kit… and started diminishing.

It’s like giving yourself a haircut, when you’re 12… and no one knows about it.. You’re trying to do it as quickly as possible in case someone should walk in, yet every time you snip one side, it’s accidentally shorter than the other and you just have to keep going back and forth to catch up. disaster.

About an hour later I looked in the mirror and when I saw what I did, I broke out in a huge smile. In my head, at that point, I was a model… I had very, very skinny brows, and I loved it. Unfortunately I don’t have access to my childhood photos right now to share this look with you, but I can assure you that the entire length of my brow was one hair thick at a time. It was so awful in retrospect, but at the time I felt beautiful and mature.

I walked out of my room and faced my Dad, who was watching TV. His response was something like, “holy shit… you might want to talk to your mom about that”… and I remember saying the exact, pathetic words, “Dad, it’s fine! I love them like this. It’s like the models.”

The look of horror on my Mom’s face when she got home from work is something I will never forget. She wasn’t mad, just upset, and demanded that I not touch them any further because I will surely regret it… a few days later it was Easter Sunday and so we were all at my Grandparents’ house. I used to dress up and feel so cool it wasn’t even funny, but this year I was a whole new person, with new brows.. I marched in there like I was the prettiest girl alive and one of my Uncles said, “holy crap- did you singe off your eyebrows?!”… needless to say, a few lip quivers later and coming to realize that my eyebrows needed some TLC, I decided to grow them out and so I did.

My mom took me to a hoity toity eyebrow joint in Neiman Marcus, Premier Atilier, and for years, that’s where I went to have my brows spruced… and to be told endlessly, “how lucky you are that these things grew back”…

When I went to college I was a lost eyebrow soul. My eyebrows knew not what to go nor where to go for TLC. I tried a few different estheticians, and shortly thereafter learned that I had a serious trust issue when it came to having other people care for my fuzzy friends. I would squirm in the seat or try to tell them that they were taking too much. As soon as they would apply the wax I’d get really mad and upset, insisting that they went too far or in too close. I was an annoying client and I knew it, but my traumatizing eyebrow history had done this to me and I couldn’t turn back. What if some eyebrow lady slipped and accidentally took off an entire brow?! I know, I know…

I decided that I was going to have to take matters into my own hands and started using eyebrow tutorials as guides… AND – In case any of you are wondering— no, I NEVER used those eyebrow stencils. How awful are those?! Don’t go there, girls and boys.

I just started using the eyebrow rules of thumb, learned how to work with that and the shape of my face (oval), where the arch belongs, where they should begin and end… and viola… I became the only person I trusted to do my eyebrows… even though I was the first person to royally screw them up.

Rules of thumb for shaping and maintaining

• Take a makeup brush that has a long skinny handle, and align it with the side of the nose and the inside corner of the eye .The eyebrow should begin from the point where the brush meets the eyebrow area.
• Now, align the brush with the edge of the nostril and the outside corner of the eye– this is where the brow should end
• Make sure those brows are balanced…which means they should begin and end at the same level. Align that brush such that it is vertical and lie at the beginning and the end of both the brow. It should be straight.
• In order to determine where your arch should be, align that brush with the tip of your nose and the center of your eye ball (yum) as your staring forward. That’s the spot.
• The thickness of the brow should be consistent throughout and slightly taper at the end.

I want you guys to use these tutorials, because they explain it more thoroughly than I can, and this is pretty much what I used to be able to do my own brows… The best piece of advice I can give is that every single little hair of your eyebrow has a huge presence. before you pluck, think. Don’t ever do a multiple pluck– that leaves a lot of room for regret. I’m telling you!

How to Arch Eyebrows (helpful with lots of pictures!)

Basic Eyebrows Tutorial with video (cute girl, knows what she’s doing)

Tips and tricks for shaping (with makeup) and filling in those sparse brows

Let’s begin with your eyebrows’ best friends… Very few of us are blessed with naturally perfect brows that need no sprucing or filling in. If you are one of them, good for you.. go away. For the rest of us, a few inexpensive tools can make ALL the difference.

1) brow sculpting pencil to fill in sparse areas and pretend that stubble is full grown hair…(pick a color that is a tad lighter than your brow color.. it will look better against your skin)
2) brow gel or clear mascara tame those unruly brows! (you can also use hairspray or hair gel, however the brow gel brush itself is a saint)
3) brow brush, which is shaped like a mascara wand. I totally prefer these to the traditional eye brow brushes, because these allow you go get in there and manipulate the hairs. This one has an amazingly convenient angle cut brush on the other end, which will help you fill those brows in.

and… hmmm while perusing my lovely Sephora I’m thinking I want this magic potion… Enticing, eh?

Helpful brow tutorial… from maintenance to filling in!

OK. this is my before (before I did any filling in) could my picture be any smaller?

My eyes after filling in and makeup

And now I will leave you with this In Style Brow guide.. oooo how exciting and informative!