REVIEW: Brow Kandie Eyebrow Stencils

I recently bought these eye stencils out of curiosity at Superdrug. I've always found my brows annoying to shape and when I think they look OK the next minute a photo is taken they look ridiculous! I'd known about eye brow stencils for a while, but I'd never bothered searching for them with all the youtube videos that teach you how to do brows anyway. But I found these by chance, and at £4.99 (bit steep for what you get really) I thought it might be worth a try.

First thing to note - these stencils are for Western shaped brows. If you don't get what I mean, in Asia brows are far less arched and tend to be thicker and fuller for a more youthful effect. The "Korean Brow" , which is basically a thicker straight line is very fashionable right now, but this trend hasn't transferred over to the West.  Being Asian, I tend to find that arched brows and straighter brows are both fine, but I prefer thicker brows for the youthful look and my brows are pretty full anyway. The stencils in the pack are all pretty arched and either start off thin and end thin, or start off thick and end thin. I ended up going for the thickest one, and even then it's pretty thin! Let me show you.

They come in a plastic packet like this.

And here are the instructions:

 Basically, put the stencil on your brow and fill in your eyebrows as normal. Remove the stencil and then pluck out any hairs that don't "fit" in the stencilled shape.

 As you can see, I didn't exactly do that. I opted for black eye shadow (something you should never use for eyebrows, even if they are black, always go for a shade or two lighter.)  just so I could see the shape. Even though I hadn't plucked my brows for a long time, the stencil fitted pretty well. The only problems I had were that my brows are naturally shorter than the stencils, so no matter what I do my brows need to be extended anyway.

My Zoeva angled liner brush did the trick in filling my brows.  After using the stencil on one brow all you need to do is flip it over onto the opposite brow - which is exactly what I did. Here's the final result!

 Sorry for the dodgy picture, I actually think the picture is a little misleading with the way I've angled it. My brows actually match a little better, and as you can see they are full and short.

Final thoughts:

- I originally was disappointed with the pack when I opened them. All of the stencils were far too thin for my taste, but I worked my way around that simply by allowing a little more room around the stencilled shape. But honestly, some of these stencils are so thin I have no idea who would want them to look that artificial.

- The plastic the stencils are made out of isn't particularly strong, if you cut it it's easily tear able. I understand that the stencil needs to be  flexible but I feel that they could be a little sturdier! They should really make these a bit cheaper - £4.99 for something so easy to break makes my wallet cry a little.

- Out of the entire pack, I only used ONE. That means 9/10 of the stencils have gone to waste (unless I'm dressing up for a particular look) so that £4.99 only paid for one useful item.

- Would I repurchase? Not really, I think I could live without these. I did end up liking them quite a lot after I had finished using them, but for £4.99 I think I could spend that money elsewhere. If you are completely clueless about brows and can't do them freehand, these could be super useful though.

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REVIEW: Rimmel Fix & Perfect PRO primer 002

Hey guys - I've had this primer for a while now and when I first bought it I bought it with a few Rimmel products. I originally though I was allergic to Rimmel products because all of the products I used seemed to burn!! However, looking back I think it's because when I was using the products I scrubbed my face WAY too hard before hand so my skin didn't react well to the products.

This primer claims to be a "Skin- perfecting" primer for "5 in 1 results: smoothes, resurfaces, brightens, mattifies and protects. Prolongs foundation wear."

Well, I have to say that it actually does those things, to a certain extent. Bear in mind I have OILY skin - even the best mattifying products don't last for too long on my skin. This primer does certainly smooth my skin, (not so sure about brightening, can never really tell and I'm kinda pale but brightening has never been a priority for me anyway) and in terms of resurfacing my pores do seem a bit smaller and as for protection I can't really tell either, since I haven't been placing my skin under any adverse conditions. (It's exam season, so I'm in my room 99% of the time.)

But all in all, it does mattify my skin for a few hours, possibly 2/3 hours then my oil begins to seep through. If you have normal, dry or only mildly oily skin I think this primer is pretty good, my skin certainly feels wonderfully velvety after applying this.

White, gel like texture. Blend very nicely on the skin, lovely velvety finish.

Pros -

- Feels great and velvety on the skin, certainly makes my skin feel smoother
- Pores seem a bit smaller
- Light
- Not expensive, around £6
- Did reduce my redness a little on my face.
- You only need a little, so quite long lasting.
- You can wear it without foundation, the gel blends out clear.

Cons -

- If you have ultra oily skin, this won't be a miracle product by any means. But if you've got a nice mattifying foundation or have other ways of controlling oil then this could work in combination with other products I guess. (But then again, if you have oily skin then I don't think there is one holy grail product that takes away all oil forever! Good skincare, a good foundation for oily skin and milk of magnesia will probably do the trick for long lasting oil control though. Oh, and a good powder too.)

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DIY brush guards! Make your own brush guards! Cheap Brush guard tutorial! (Big brushes, tiny brushes and a angled eye liner brush!)

Brush guards are great - after washing your brushes you can really get the water out of them by placing your brushes upside down while keeping the shape intact. They're also great for travel too, so your brushes don't get squished in transit. I'm too cheap to buy brush guards, particularly with the amount of brushes I have, so I DIY them. You can buy the mesh on Ebay for extremely cheap, I think I ordered 1m from China for 99p, so it took a month but hey, it arrived.

I don't think I'm the first to do this - if someone else has done it then by all means go for it. A quickie post on how I did it and that's all from me folks!

You'll need thread, a needle, scissors and the brushes you wanna make guards for. If you only want to use guards for big brushes, then you won't need anything but scissors and you can slide your brushes through straight away.

I've used the mesh on a variety of brush sizes, the DIY will cover how I made a guard for a tiny tiny eco tools eye brush, and a zoeva angled liner brush.

The angled eye liner brush, due to to it's shape, will be cut differently and won't be as tight as other brush guards, further explanation below.

1.  Cut enough mesh to cover the head of the brush.

2. Cut the mesh at an angle, so the largest part will be the part covering the brush head.

3. Get sewing! Doesn't have to be nice or neat, just poke the needles through the mesh holes and bind the mesh together firmly so the mesh doesn't come apart and can take a brush being pushed through.

 4. You end up with a thing that looks like this.

5. Slide the brush into the mesh starting from the bottom of the brush, and there you have it. The angled brush shouldn't be squished up and should be able to be placed upside down for drying without the brush falling through. If it does fall through, it means you need to sew it tighter. Better tighter than looser when sewing these - if it's too tight then you can just stretch the mesh a little.

6. Leftover mesh? 

7. Make a tiny brush guard!

8. See how thin it is in comparison to the brush? (Travel sized tiny brush by the way.)

9. But it fits perfectly cause of the stretchy - ness! With normal brushes you can just make the guards as tight as possible - the angled brush is an exception because it's flat, so you don't want to squish up the sizes and deform the brush! That's why I made the guard flatter and a little bit looser than my other guards. 

10. Ta da! Perfect for putting your brushes in to dry after washing!

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Using art/paint brushes for makeup? My attempt at using Boldmere art brushes.

I recently bought 4 thin art brushes for 99p from the Works, and I wanted to try them out for eye liner. I've got an angled eyeliner brush, but I recently discovered that the eyeliner brush is a fake from a fake set of ecotools brushes I bought off Ebay. Disappointing, but I think I might prefer thin art like brushes rather than the angled brush anyhow. 

The brushes come in 4 different hair lengths, and I chose two for my experiment. 

BRAND: Boldmere

 5/0 Boldmere (The longer haired one)

10/0 Boldmere (The shorter haired one)

Since the brushes were cheap, I expected a few odd sticking out hairs which I cut off.

RESULTS:

Pretty darn good for what they are. Bear in mind that my eyeliner wasn't the newest product, (The Maybelline Eye Studio Lasting Drama Gel Liner) and I think had I warmed up the product everything would have been smoother! These brushes work. I would recommend using the 10/0 Boldmere brush, since it is smaller, but the longer brush is only a tiny bit harder to use with a tiny bit less control.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

If you want a nice cheap eye liner brush, try looking in art shops now and then. These can do the job pretty well. They aren't really comparable to real eye liner brushes in the sense that they are pointed and have an odd hair sticking out, but they definitely do a decent job! (Until you save up for a nicer eye liner brush at least! )  

Sorry for the lack of actual pictures everyone! I stupidly wiped off the eyeliner before realising I should do a blog post! XP

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