// ALL ABOUT BROWS //

I was recently inspired by the wonderful Anna from ViviannaDoesMakeup and her video about her brow history and thought I'd create a blog post sharing photo's of how my eyebrows have come to what they are today and how I keep them in check! So be prepared for a few embarrassing photos and a few brow disasters...

June 2011 - Year 11 prom

So these are the brows I started with, pretty bushy, literally no shape but a tad sparse in areas and this is how they stayed until I realised just how horrific they were and that everyone around me was taming theirs and I wasn't.

Although despite this, it took until January 2013 to finally ‘borrow’ my Mum’s tweezers and give plucking a go. After watching numerous YouTube videos and gaining inspiration from some of my favourite beauty bloggers/vloggers I ended up with this…

Yeah, over plucked into a rounded line and then filled in with a rogue brown eyeshadow I had. But I remember this day so well, I went into town with my Mum and felt über confident with my new brows. If only I knew how awful they looked.

In February 2013 they improved slightly, with a little more shape as I begun growing them out a little, but still I was apparently a fan of the arched line, but not in a stylish way.

In May 2013 I bought a MAC 266 brush which transformed my brows no end and by July 2013 I had an actual shape to my brows, hurrah! I was well in the depths of filling them in with MAC’s Charcoal Brown eyeshadow and to be honest, they don’t look too bad.

But instead of leaving them be, according to this photo I wanted a more ‘square’ shape to the fronts, but this was the complete wrong way of going about it.

By October I’d realised the error of my ways and they look alright again. I had dark hair at this point so loved a strong dark brow. They looked okay, but a little too unnatural for my current liking.

June 2014 saw a lighter hand with my shadow and a good arch which was a great improvement and I like how my brows look here.

These are two recent photos where I am pretty happy with how my brows look, although they are obviously given a little nudge with the help of some shadow, they don’t look ‘drawn on’ with the likes of a dark brown pencil so I’m satisfied.

As I'm growing out to my natural light brown hair, I use a MAC 266 with Charcoal Brown eyeshadow to start and create the main shape and arch of my brown but focus the product mainly on the underside of my brows and the tail end. Then I simply use ‘Naked 2’ shadow from the Urban Decay Naked Basics palette to build up the fronts and top edge of my brows. I feel like this works well and gives the effect I desire. For now, this is how I want my brows and seems to be fairly ‘on trend’ with the bushy brow look. I’ll never have wonderfully busy brows but at least I can give a little of that effect and keep them looking tamed and in check. I don’t wax or thread, simply pluck any stray hairs every 4 days or so, this way I’m still growing them as much as I can from my 2013 disaster but keep them looking neat and tidy.

New Buys #1

So I finally paid off my £300 debt with my grandma (she kindly leant me the money to buy an iPad, so I have been paying her back for months) and now I'm getting money on a weekly basis, I can't stop spending!
As always, I went straight to Superdrug to browse and buy some makeup products that I'd seen other bbloggers, particularly Stef and Sara who are my absolute favourites. I suggest you check them out, Sarah also has a YouTube channel which is where I learnt skills to fine tune my makeup routine!

So the first product I saw Stef using which caught my eye, is an eyebrow pencil with a comb on the lid by Rimmel.

The shade I bought was "002 Hazel" but there are shades to suit everyone's shade of hair. The retail price was only £2.99 which I feel is an absolute bargain, particularly for me as I needed a comb and a pencil to help make the tail of my brows more precise and Rimmel have created this handy all-in-one.

The second product I bought is something I came across on the Superdrug website when I was having a browse for a new eye shadow palette as I'm yet to find one that I love. I have recently been lusting after the Naked palette (isn't everyone?!) but I simply cannot afford it at the minute so I was looking for something of a similar style and I think I have found it and for just a fraction of the price! The reviews on the Superdrug website featured people saying the colours were similar to the Naked palette and for £4 (yes, £4!) I thought I had nothing to lose.

I present the MUA 'undressed' palette.

Some colours are shimmery where others are matte which I love as I'm fed up of wearing shimmery colours everyday and on occasion, fancy something more nude. I tried this palette for the first time today and am really impressed. The colours are pretty pigmented and the different shades are a wonderful change to my previous everyday eye shadows. I used this video by Sara to do my makeup today, she uses the Naked palette so I used the colours I thought were most similar and the finished makeup looked almost the same, but still looked lovely (I thought so anyway!) and obviously people wouldn't know that I hadn't used the Naked palette, eheh! So as you can tell, I'm really loving this product and would recommend it to anyone, plus it's so cheap that even people on a limited budget can afford it and create so many great eye looks.

In addition to the MUA palette, I bought a single pressed eyeshadow, a deeper matter brown which didn't feature in the palette; for just £1. 

Again, this shade is a good addition to the 'Undressed' palette and for only £1, you can't go wrong!

Last, but certainly not least, a lipstick from Barry M. I've been after a bright red lipstick for a while and after buying a few that looked red on the packaging but were more pink when applied to the lips, I have finally found the right shade! Hurrah! Ideally, I would buy a MAC lipstick, but due to a budget at the minute, I shopped around for a cheaper alternative and good old Barry M sorted me out with the shade 'Pillarbox Red'. 

The lipsticks from Barry M are very pigmented which I love and smooth onto the lips very easily. Unfortunately if you have dry or cracked lips, any imperfections show up where the lipstick hasn't got into the cracks, but as long as you keep you lips soft using Vaseline or other lip balm, then these lipsticks are great. I always feel that the swatches on the stand are very accurate to what the actual product looks like and for only £4.49 they are good value for money. 

So, that concludes the products I bought the other day and I hope you found my reviews useful. Please have a look at the girls blogs I mentioned above as they are two that I check for updates on a daily basis, and love the content they post! 

Please become a member of my blog (You can do this on the right) and feel free to comment if you have used any of these products, recommend any other products or even feedback on what content I post; I would really appreciate it. (You can even comment anonymously if you wish.)

I have also made a new twitter account specifically for this blog: @bonjourkatie_, follow me to be updated with everything to do this blog and give suggestions on what to post.

Thank you to the people who view my blog, and I hope you'll continue reading.