With such emphasis on hair removal, especially once the weather turns warm, it can be quite frustrating for some who wished they had more hair in certain places… like their eyebrows. Bold, bushy brows have had their spokesmodels throughout the decades — Frida Kahlo, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields, Madonna — and now Hailee Steinfeld, Priyanka Chopra and Lily Collins have us sweating some real brow landscaping.
But what do you do when your garden refuses to grow? Sure, you could grab a brow pencil, brow powder, brow mascara or brow gel — but what if you don’t really know what to do with your arches? Maybe you want to change their shape? Even ’em out? It’s just so time-consuming to perfect your brows, and don’t get us started on midday brow smudging. So embarrassing.
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There is, however, another road to perfect arches: eyebrow tattoos. Hear us out. Browhaus, a brow and lash-centric salon, offers the Brow Resurrection procedure, a semi-permanent makeup option to make your brows look naturally filled-in and shaped to perfection — all without the fuss of half a dozen products. Of course, they’re not the only ones offering brow tattoos, but they were one of the first, so we decided to try it out.
First of all, don’t be scared to commit. It’s called Brow Resurrection because it’ll only last you two years — long enough that you don’t have to worry about having to pencil your brows every morning for a long time, but brief enough that if you decide to change your style or you experience any growth spurts with age, you can certainly change your brows along with them. If you’ve never had a tattoo before, there’s nothing to stress about. And if you have, there’s even less. Here’s how it works.
The first part is a brow consultation where you meet with a certified “brow architect” who will draw on the brows you desire with pencil so you can see how the results will look and you can tweak as you please. A numbing cream is applied afterward, once you’re happy with the shape, and left to marinate for 20 minutes. Then your brow architect will gently remove that, and using a micro-blade with about 14 teeny pinpoints, will proceed to gently scratch a vegetable-based ink into your eyebrows following the traced shape. Since the blades are so tiny, they appear just like hairline strokes. Once you’re done, a protective balm that’s enriched with vitamins A and D and lanolin is applied.
But does it hurt? Surprisingly, not at all. The numbing cream is serious stuff. It feels a tiny bit just like you’re getting your brows tweezed — a sensation we can all relate to. Your brow area will be a bit sensitive and for some maybe a bit red right after the procedure (which takes about an hour and a half), but you can pretty much go about your day afterward. The recovery period is discreet too. Browhaus offers a couple of aftercare products: Build, a post-treatment serum with growth factors to help regenerate and heal the skin (and prevent infection), and Fix, a protective balm that’s enriched with lanolin and vitamins, which also “waterproofs” your eyebrows with its petroleum-like consistency. Speaking of which, the trickiest part about semi-permanent makeup on your face is that you can’t let it have prolonged contact with water for a week. So, washing your face is a bit of an ordeal, and showering is a little tricky.
You may notice some flaking as your brow skin naturally scabs and heals, leaving a slightly lighter line than was initially there. Browhaus offers a complimentary tune-up about three months after your Resurrection procedure so your brow architect can fill in any areas that didn’t take as well or any faded bits. Anyone who’s gotten a tattoo will know that it’s itchy as hell when it’s healing, but you can’t scratch it because you could remove the ink along with the scab! Face-pickers, steel yourselves!
In the end, it’s a painless procedure that gives you natural-looking, full and shaped eyebrows for two years — pretty neat, huh? Only catch is that it’s not exactly cheap. Well, tattoos never are, but resurrecting your brows can cost just under a grand at Browhaus. It may be steep (start saving up your acorns now!) but the results are really impressive. And if you break it down by cost per wear, it’s about $1.26 a day for perfect brows two years straight. That’s less than you probably spend on your morning coffee.
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By Sable Yong
Originally posted on StyleCaster