Guest Blogger: Eyebrow Masterclass by Katy

Now if you haven't heard of  Make-up by Katy please let me have the pleasure of introducing her to you. Katy has been a make-up artist for for over 13yrs working both as a trainer and an international artist. Make-up has taken her all over the world and you can tell that she loves the stuff. She wouldn't be doing it for a living if she didn't! So today's post is from Katy herself on eyebrows. Y'all know I'm borderline neurotic about my brows so this is the perfect post! Head over to her blog to read more fabulous posts! Enjoy xxx

Hi Girls,

Anyone that knows me will tell you, eyebrows are very important to me. Mine, yours, his, hers, newsreaders on the telly. They all become the focus of my attention at some point.

I am a fan of full, groomed, well made-up brows. I have a deep running hatred of badly waxed brows. Not the owners mind, the therapists that massacre them!

I am going to attempt to take you, step by step, through how I create my brows.

My brows are far from perfect. They are naturally sparse in certain areas and extremely different from eachother. That isn't unusal. Have you ever heard of the expression,

"Eyebrows should be sisters, not twins."

You may laugh, but it's true. We as humans are hugely un-symetrical. My tip for brows is, pick which brow is your better brow, fill that in first and then match the other one as closely as possible.

These are my eyes and brows totally un-defined. I of course have concealer on. I'm not a sadist!

 It really shows best the areas of sparseness. For me, it's on the inner corners. This isn't through overplucking, that's the natural shape I was born with. I'm also patchy underneath. That is from over plucking and I strive to fill that area in with make-up.

I'll start off by showing you the guide to where a well proportioned brow should start and finish.

Starting point. Aligned with the nose. This can be varied in cases of wide/close set eyes and wide/narrow noses etc, this is just a basic guide.

This is to mark where the brow should end. Wider brows can slim down a square jaw. Brows that are too short can have the opposite effect. Going lower than this point can drag the eyes downwards.

Here I'm marking where the peak should be, the highest point. It's done by taking a brush from the corner of your nose through the centre of the iris.

The basic shape is then built from here. as a rule, the inner corner should be at the same level as the outer tail or slightly lower. The width should be the same thickness from the inner corner, through to the peak where it should taper out. The most flattering, classic shape is to keep the line straight, as opposed to rounded.

I used an RMK Brow Pencil today, the shade is Grey Brown. I'm very specific about colours I use on brows, both on my own and on my clients. I will almost always lean towards an ashy, grey toned shade. This prevents getting that red toned look that brown brow pencils can give.

The brow pencil has a more traditional flat edge. This is great as it enables me to draw hair-like strokes in as opposed to thick pencil lines.

My first step with the pencil is to draw in some hair on the inner corner. I try and follow the direction of the hair growth. The key is not to have a sharp line at the beginning. Our brows don't start suddenly.... they gradually fade in, so I always brush over this part and pat in in with my finger.

Next, I take the pencil along the top of my brow where I fill in the hairs along the arch. Note how I'm keeping the lines parallel to eachother? Take a look at the next picture to see the stage I'm at after these 2 steps.

Hurrah! I'm getting a shape! Now to address the over-plucked arch on the underside. (I do believe tweezers should be illegal until at least 25).

I took the pencil and drew along the underside of the brow to lower my arch and even out the width . I am conscious of having the dreaded tadpole shape! If you have a naturally large brow bone like I do, be sure that you don't take your arch too high.

Take a concealer brush and tidy up any uneven edges, this is also handy to sharpen a line if you're inbetween your brow shaping sessions.

And the before and after...

I know which one I prefer!!

Thanks for reading!

Yours, arched and ready

I'm about that bizness mayn!

I've been a practicing MUA for a while now. However it's taken me a while to get my business side of things going the way I wanted to. I am still working on my website and I am well on my way now and little by little my plan for world domination is coming into fruition! lol! Not really but I am happy with my progress! :)

Last week I finally got my business cards through. These have been in the works for about half a year. Why? I just couldn't decide what I wanted on them. My brother did a few designs for me which I loved [I still might use them] And then I played around myself and came up with a few of my own. I did a fair amount of research into business cards but it's suprising how little information there is out there about make-up artist business cards [not that I was expecting a plethora of info but hey its all good!] I know that I wanted something colourful but simple at the same time. I wanted it to be eyecatching but easy to read the information on there too. I think I achieved the desired effect!

I shall not be giving these out just yet until I have dvoradivine.com working properly. But that shouldnt be too long. Cannot wait!

The weekend is here lovelies!
God bless you abundantly!