Help my stupid looking eyebrows

January 4, 2012 1:48 PM

Where can I find or approximate auburn eyebrow cosmetics?

This question seems silly, this should be something I should be able to find in a drugstore or the internet, but I keep coming up short.

My natural hair color is a dark, not bright at all, auburn. I brighten this up considerably and it looks good and natural with my overall fair coloring. However, my eyebrows don't match at all. They bleach out easily, so are often either too dark or too light and never in any way "auburn". They look better with a little pencil, mascara or powder to define them.

I am wary of dying them and have some kind of weird thing against "Just for Redheads" cosmetics. Does anyone have any experience or ideas for us kinda fake redheads?

posted by stormygrey to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (14 answers total)

Use clear mascara for shaping/control, and match a shadow color to your (current) hair color for darkening.
posted by mollymayhem at 1:53 PM on January 4, 2012

Best answer: Anastasia's brow powder duo is very high quality and comes in a "strawberry blonde" color. You can find it at Sephora and Ulta.
posted by insectosaurus at 1:59 PM on January 4, 2012 [5 favorites]

Sephora should have something. If you have a store near you, go there. Their staff are extremely well-trained, and you can try out the products to find something you like. If not, their website has all the products they sell, and they offer a full refund on any product you're not satisfied with, so you could buy a few things and return any that you don't like. A quick search pulled up a few products that might have good colors for you, but there are 53 products in their "eyebrow enhancers" category, so you may want to look more carefully for colors you like.
posted by decathecting at 1:59 PM on January 4, 2012

Many natural redheads, such as myself, have dark eyebrows. Dyed red eyebrows are actually sometimes a giveaway of the hair being dyed. (You can click my profile to get a glimpse of my eyebrows, if not my hair, but my hair is a rich auburn.) It's sort-of like how dark-haired men sometimes have red beards. Facial hair is weird; you may not want to be too matchy-matchy.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:15 PM on January 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Maybelline just released a new brow pencil in Auburn, Master Shape, which I'm rather liking, but my red hair is not naturally so. :) It's not too dark or ridiculously red. It's brand new, and I've only seen it in one of the CVSes near me.
posted by lysimache at 2:18 PM on January 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have naturally medium auburn hair (the color is such that most people I've met refer to me as a redhead, but maybe 2 out of 10 people will swear that I'm a brunette and not a redhead. apparently my coloring is controversial) and somewhat sparse eyebrows. When I filled in my brows, I never found a better color than Bobbi Brown eyeshadow in Blonde (it's the second color in the list of colors, not the default image). In the packaging it just looks like a warmish light brown, which is not the color I'd want my brows...but on my skin, underneath my actual brow hairs, it made my eyebrows appear to be exactly the medium/dark auburn shade on my head. Everything else I ever tried was either too red (I'm looking at you, "made for redheads" products!) or too gray. If you read the reviews of Blonde on Makeupalley, you'll find tons of redheads of all shades extolling it's virtues. It's miraculous.

All that said, this past year I have discovered professional brow tinting. I have amazing eyebrows now! They look soooo good! Weeee!!! I can't recommend it enough. I used to wear "natural" makeup every day, and now that I have awesome perfectly colored eyebrows, I don't wear anything half the time. I'd have never thought to blame my compulsion to always have makeup on on my eyebrows, but there it is.
posted by JuliaIglesias at 2:18 PM on January 4, 2012

Best answer: I think Eyebrows McGee has it, the trick is not to try to go too red with your eyebrows. Even though some natural redheads do have genuinely red/strawberry blonde brows, I think it'll be tricky to find a product to mimic that artificially without heading too far into ghoulish. I would try a product intended for blondes or light brunettes.

I'm a natural dark redhead with super pale skin who freckles in the summer, and I find Benefit Brow Zing in Light is perfect and natural looking - it's a very light brown powder to fill in gently and a subtly colored wax to hold in place. The packaging says it's intended for light blonde to light brown hair while their Medium shade is better for darker brown and red, but I find Medium to be too WHOA on my vampire skin - If your complexion is darker or more olive-y in undertone, it might work for you. In any shade, it's a great product and lasts forever with daily use.
posted by superfluousm at 2:21 PM on January 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I came in to recommend Benefit Brow Zing, but see that superfluousm beat me to it.

I'm a natural red head and have almost no eyebrows. They're brown in some places and just, like, invisible in others. I imagine that many other redheads are similar, and thus filling in their brows so they don't look weird.
posted by Gucky at 2:37 PM on January 4, 2012

Try Mary Kay Classic Blonde. I know, it sounds light, but it's not. If you prefer darker, then try soft auburn. There is a brunette, but that will be more brown.

If you can't find someone to get that for you, contact me.
posted by Yellow at 4:25 PM on January 4, 2012

Many natural redheads, such as myself, have dark eyebrows. Dyed red eyebrows are actually sometimes a giveaway of the hair being dyed.

Second this, be careful with matchy brows if your hair is naturally dark red. Mine are naturally dark brown, and when I used to lighten my auburn hair a bit, it never looked quite right to try to match the brows--I just used a lighter brown than I do when my hair is its natural color. Something about my skin tone itself, I figure--I have several cousins with light copper hair and they have matching brows and lashes, but also much paler and pinker skin.
posted by padraigin at 4:27 PM on January 4, 2012

Best answer: My hair is naturally blonde, but I color my hair auburn. I brush in a brown-ish brow powder, though, because red looks clowny on me. Many people compliment me on my "natural red hair" all the time, so my eyebrows must not be an obvious giveaway. I love Benefit products, so you can't go wrong there, but I happen to be using Illamasqua Eye Brow Cake in Thunder right now (it looks strangely light in the photo but it's actually dark brown in person). Use sparingly, though. It would be easy to give yourself Bert brows with a heavy hand.
posted by katillathehun at 4:47 PM on January 4, 2012

When I had dyed dark auburn hair I used Lancome's brow groomer in "Chataigne". It is a nice warm color, looks totally natural, and is easy to use. It is also ridiculously expensive, but it lasts a long time, so you might find it to be worth the price.
posted by ezrainch at 9:05 PM on January 4, 2012

Best answer: I have brown hair with red highlights but inherited the sparse eyebrows of my redheaded father. I cannot get the hang of penciling in my eyebrows but love love love the Anastasia tinted brow gel to add a bit of color. The Brunette version looks too red for my hair color and I use the Espresso. You might have luck with either the Brunette or the Caramel color.
posted by Miss Matheson at 9:24 PM on January 4, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks everyone! I will definitely be braving a mall sometimes soon. I also realize I wasn't being clear. Its not that my eyebrows don't match naturally, its that I need to define them or they disappear (all blond baby hair like, I really don't pluck that much!) and then I feel like they start looking unnatural. In this picture I had to turn up the contrast a little or they were pretty invisible.
posted by stormygrey at 8:56 AM on January 6, 2012