Don't have fright brows with Paul and Joe!

It’s Hallowe’en and this article I found on my Facebook feed last week gave me a real fright. it’s about awful make up, but the most awful thing in every image to me seemed to the eyebrows! It reminded me of this list from a few years back – check out how BAD these eyebrows are!

Why do people get it SO wrong! Eyebrows are so important – they shape your face (as well as stopping swet from running into your eyes!), and yet they are so often, just so bad! From over-thick HD brows, to tweezed to within an inch of their life too thin brows, there are so many mistakes to be made with these two lines of hair on your face.

But there are so many ways to get it right as well! I’ve been using some lovely products from gorgeous makeup brand Paul & Joe recently that have made shading and shaping my eyebrows a joy!

“Paul & Joe  offers the most useful and intelligent eyebrow products that I have ever encountered in this industry – I cannot work without them,” says Craig-Ryan French PAUL & JOE Beauté Artistic Beauty Director & Global Make-up Artist. “I make this statement not as a PAUL & JOE representative – but instead, as a working, professional make-up artist who has experimented and tested nearly every make up brand currently available. Every make-up artist and individual who I personally introduce to the PAUL & JOE eyebrow assortment agrees – these products are simply the best!”

So what are these wonder products? Well, I’ve been using three different products – Eyebrow Powder, an Eyebrow Pencil Duo, and an Eyebrow Liner.

The Eyebrow Powder (£15) emphasises and softly defines the brows. It contains minimal red pigment, so brows remain natural-looking. It’s really easy to use – it comes with a little brush for application, and you add a little to your brows and it looks like a real shadow underneath the hair of your eyebrows. It comes in two shades, Light and Medium, and each powder compact has two shades within it.

The Eyebrow Pencil Duo (£14.50) is a musthave for perfectly shaped and defined brows! It’s double-ended, with two complementary colours for brows in one pencil. The lighter shade delicately shapes and defines, and the darker side fills in the gaps and accentuates arches. It comes in three shades Duo Sable, Duo Brown and Duo Blonde.

Finally, the Eyebrow Liner (£15), which features an ultra-fine 1.2 mm tip to finish brows with the ultimate precision.

Be Hollywood dramatic, or fashionably understated by subtly sketching hair by hair! I LOVE this tool. It is so precise, and so easy to use. It comes in three shades, Dark Mocha, Brown and Blonde.

So, how do you achieve perfect brows, and avoid the fright night look. well, eyebrow need to provide balance. They can narrow or widen a face, even lift a tired eye. They are a frame for your eyes. So, Paul & Joe have some simple eyebrow rules for getting them right:

1. Line up the inner edge of the brow with the outside of the corresponding nostril (A)

2. The general rule is highest point of the arch, should be just at the outer edge of the iris
(B). However, a more sophisticated eye is achieved when the highest point occurs at the
outer corner of the eyeball (C) – depending on the face shape anywhere between B & C is
optimal. Experiment!

3. The outer brow should taper off to a point that intersects with an imaginary line drawn
from the center of lips, past the outer nostril, to the outer edge of the eye (D).

So, how do you then shade your brows? Well, using a pencil in combination with powder, offers the control and delineation of a pencil, with the softer, shaded look of a powder. Try shaping the brow with the powder first, and then finish the detail work with the pencil . This is especially helpful if you have sparse areas in your eyebrow, or need to slightly extend the end of your brows so they properly frame your eyes.

As much as possible, work only with the hair that is there. Do not forget that eyebrow color should look shaded and soft, not like a straight, hard line. The idea is to shade rather than draw on eyebrows. Trust me, this is good advice. I spent most of the 1990s with drawn on eyebrows – not great!

Most brows have some thin places that need to be filled in. Comb brows down and apply the colour directly to the sparse patches on the skin. If you need to lengthen your brows apply color in light feathery strokes to mimic hair growth. Smooth hair back overtop to disguise your work!

Here are a few more bullet points to remember when tending to those brows!

* Remember that nobody’s eyebrows are totally symmetrical. As many have said, eyebrows are sisters, not twins!

* To balance wider set eyes, start brows a little closer together. For closer set eyes, begin slightly farther apart.

* The ending tip of the eyebrow should never drop below the level of the beginning of the brow. Brows should sit on the same horizon line or the slightly higher, but never lower.

* Beware of over tweezing, as too-thin brows can actually make you look older!

* Use an eyebrow pencil, or powder that matches the color of your own eyebrows. The exception is if you have pale or blonde eyebrows, use a color that’s one or two shades deeper than your natural brow color—this prevents blonde brows from looking washed out, especially when other eye makeup is worn. Of course, if you want to be fashion forward you could always bleach your brows blonder! But this is not for everyone!

You can buy Paul & Joe Beaute eyebrow products from Selfridges, Harrods, ASOS.com and beautybay.com, as well as indpendent stockists nationwide.