(Don't) Shine On: Two Top Tips For Preventing Shiny Eyebrows

Hello folks! Summer's pretty much here, so I've emerged from my blog hibernation to send my best wishes to you all AND share a couple of summery tips with you.

Where I DON'T live.

As lovely as warmer weather is, for us it also heralds the arrival of something even more annoying than wasps at your summer picnic — and that is shiny eyebrows. Heat and humidity are irritating enough when they transform your face into an oil slick, but when they start to affect your painstakingly-drawn brows and make them look unrealistically shiny (or even threaten to make them slide off), it's enough to make you stay indoors in front of an industrial-strength fan until the leaves start falling. So, how do I stop my eyebrows becoming shiny and annoying? With these two amazing products:



1. Bald Girls Do Lunch eyebrow sealer

I've written about this product before, but it's just fantastic. (No, I don't work for them.) It's so good at keeping your drawn-on eyebrows on your face that I have long since forgotten how upset I was at Benefit Cosmetics discontinuing my previous sealer-of-choice She-Laq.

Where it really beats all the other sealers out there, however, is the lack of shine it dries with — after applying it over your eyebrow makeup you're left with a pleasingly matte finish that gives an extra-realistic touch to your new brows. I should also mention that you can now buy this product online on the Makeup Shop section of the Bald Girls Do Lunch website, which is awesome!

Of course, even products as heroic as this cannot work miracles, and there's no sealer in the world which can stay 100% shine-free in the face of Californian heat (or even just one's own natural oily tendencies in the T-Zone.) Which is why you also need:


2. Oil-absorbing blotting sheets 

If you're dismayed by how shiny your eyebrow makeup looks a few hours after application, simply press one of these oil-absorbing blotting sheets carefully over the eyebrow region and lift it gently away. Voila: the grease is gone!

Note: you're not rubbing or wiping your eyebrow with the sheet (this will smear your beautifully-applied work.) Rather, you're pressing it onto the area — and if you do this right, you won't lift away any of the makeup at all, I promise. The technique I like to employ for optimum oil removal is pressing a sheet onto one eyebrow and holding it in place at one end with my left hand, while gently sweeping two fingers on my right hand across the sheet and across the eyebrow. This way, you're soaking up the oil from the skin whilst not disturbing the make-up under the sheet at all, because you're not applying any friction to it. Perfect! (This, by the way, is a great way of removing oil all over your face.)

There are a lot of oil absorbing sheets out there in the chemist's/drugstore, the best probably being Clean and Clear's lovely, powdery sheets. I do have a slightly weird confession though: whilst they aren't common in the UK, you know those toilet seat cover sheets you'll find in a little dispenser in pretty much any US restroom?

They are amazing at absorbing oil, and you can tear off as much as you need. They are also FREE, and come on; it's not like you're grabbing a used one! Stop looking at me like that! If you're in a bind, or just really object to the toilet seat cover thing, a sheet of toilet paper or tissue is also pretty good at blotting shine from your brows too.

Enjoy your shine-free summer! Love, Carly.