It would appear that my brows are my new obsession. Before I give you the lowdown on the Maybelline Fashion Brow Sharp Pencil, I’ll set the scene and tell you a little bit more about my brow situation.
They’ve always been on the somewhat sparse side of things which probably didn’t help when, in my late teens, I discovered tweezers and proceeded to pluck them into oblivion. I also have somewhat unsymmetrical brows. Now I know that no one person’s face is really ever exactly the same on both sides but my brows took differences to the next level. For my left brows grows completely in the opposite direction they are supposed to grow. Where brows tend to either grow outwards or downwards once past the arch, my left brow has a mind of it’s own. It grows upwards. For that reason, clear mascara was always my best friend. It’s helps to tame my wayward brow, keeping them in a slightly more downward position and also in place all day to match my ‘good’, right brow.
My preferred way of adding extra body and fullness to my near non existent brows has been to use a dark brown eyeshadow. Mac Mystery is my product and shade of choice, always applied with an angled brush (and typically the left brow is extended way past where it ends to match my right brow) and set with the aforementioned mascara.
Nowadays however, it seems that there are a plethora of brow products on the beauty market from gel liners to tinted creams. The Sleek Eyebrow Stylist ( in the shade dark) was the first of many when I strayed from the powder and I quite liked it. It’s a completely different texture to a powder, a waxy pencil with an angled head, which makes depositing the product and ‘drawing’ the brow pretty easy.
Then I upgraded and got the Hourglass Arch Brow Sculpting Pencil in Dark Brunette. It’s pretty much the same product as the Sleek brow offering except for the heftier price tag at around three times as much, and an actually better colour match. Dark Brunette is rather on the ashy side of the colour spectrum whereas the Sleek Eyebrow Stylist in Dark had more of a red tinge to it. Needless to say, I prefer the Hourglass one, I just wished it had a Sleek price tag instead.
The Pixi Natural Brow Duo was my next experiment and I’d gotten this because of it’s dual purpose functionality. Waxy pencil one end and similar to the two just mentioned but on the other, a tinted brow gel to set and finish the brows. I’ve been used to using a clear gel for such a long time but a tinted brow just made so much more sense. However, the brow gel failed to deliver. Whilst it coated the brow and gave it some added texture for a more real look to the brows, it failed to keep them in place and did nothing more than dampen my already very sorry looking brows.
Then on my recent trip to a pharmacy during my travels to Malaysia, I stumbled upon Maybelline’s Fashion Brow Sharp Pencil (which can be seen here on the Maybelline New York Hong Kong site). Upon closer inspection, I thought that it had an uncanny resemblance to the one brow product that I’ve not yet gotten my hands on but am dying to try. It’s none other than the Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz.
The Maybelline one is quite similar in texture to the Sleek and Hourglass pencils in that it’s a waxy formulated pencil. The shape of the pencil is more of your traditional bic pencils with the refillable lead and where you have twist it to reveal the pencil. The other end reveals a slim line spoolie hidden by a pull off lid/cap. It’s the perfect tool to finish off your brows by brushing through the product (once applied) for a more natural finish.
The first issue I had was before I had even so much as touched the pencil to my brow. The lead snapped. Crap. I twisted up some more pencil and again, snap! Double crap. By the time I had finished one brow, I had only half of the product left. The other half? Snapped into pieces and somewhere amongst the carpet threads. Needless to say, I was unimpressed. However, as much as I wanted to hate the product, which had already robbed me of half it’s content, the outcome was pretty, darn good. The fine tip allows you, once it’s stopped snapping, to draw very fine ‘hairs’ onto your brows that actually looks pretty real and exactly how I’d imagined the Anastasia Brow Wiz to be. The colour is an ashy brown which is my preferred tone of brown and the formulation is pretty resistant so sticks around all day without a smudge or smear in sight.
The one thing I like about this one and I’d say it has one over on the Sleek and Hourglass pencils is it’s abiltiy to allow me to lengthen my brow discreetly because of it’s minute tip, something the angled head pencils failed to allow me to do without going in afterwards to correct the mess, because the pencil is just a bit too thick for my brows. Those blessed with big, bushy brows won’t have this problem.
So who would have guessed? A product that I was sure set to be a big disappointment, turned out to be a pretty alright one in the end and I’ve been using it everyday for the past week. Sadly the snapping hasn’t stopped so I’ve literally only got about one millimetre of product left. Another sad note is this product is not available in the UK, only in some parts of Asia. Firstly, if this is to come to the UK, they will need to address the durability of the pencil without compromising on the quality of the product. If they can address that, then the brow market will seriously have some stiff competition on their hands as I’m guessing it will be around the £5-£7 mark.
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