Enliven your brows with HighBrow

I’m still on my Northern Europe and Scandinavian holiday but I’m glad that people (much like in Singapore), find a very strong need to stay connected online and I haven’t had much issue with wifi availability. I’ll be heading up to Lapland and the Arctic Circle tomorrow and I cannot guarantee if there will be any mobile signal, much less internet connectivity so I thought that it will be a good idea to put up a post first.

Before I left on my trip, I was back in Singapore for 3 weeks to recharge and sort out my travelling necessities. One of the things on my to-do list was the grooming of my eyebrows. For a supposedly beauty-concious person like myself, it’s really odd  how I don’t draw my brows or take care of them as I should. Most of my friends (especially Clara!)  are always appalled at my brows and have reminded me that brows are essential for shaping the overall face.

Since I will be spending my Chinese New Year abroad, I decided that I needed to at least have presentable brows for the new year before I leave Singapore. I made an appointment with HighBrow at Star Vista for eyebrow threading.

I walked passed HighBrow when I went to Star Vista last year for Love Mi boutique shop opening with Elaine. Even then I liked the store’s clean and minimalistic décor and thought that I should try them out. After seeing some of their `before and after’ photos on HighBrow Facebook page, I felt that they would do a good job for me.

I entered HighBrow with very embarrassing uneven and messy eyebrows. If you look at all of my past photos, you’ll realise that this is actually what you normally see on my photos as well since I don’t usually maintain or draw my brows (Gasp!). I definitely needed help badly.

Within a few minutes of settling down into their comfy chair, the threading was completed. It was fast, well executed and the therapist was very detailed. She checked my preference before she began and made the whole process very comfortable.

The whole process was so efficient! Even without drawing my brows, they look so much neater and shapelier.

Here’s the before and after threading comparison of my brows.

But fate dictated that my destiny with HighBrow was to be continued. While doing threading for my brows, I noticed that my therapist had a gorgeous set of eyebrows. She told me that they were semi-permanent brows that were done using HighBrows Enliven! technique. It looked so natural that I couldn’t tell that it was semi-permanent. My curiosity was stirred and I asked if  I could learn more about it.

The owner, Cynthia, introduced me to Andy, the creative director at HighBrow for a more detailed explanation. Andy was the best person for the job since he is the creator of the Brows Enliven! technique. With his 20 over years of experience with brows, he has seen many eyebrow embroidery or tattoo jobs gone wrong. Thus, he has developed Brows Enliven! which is also semi-permanent but NOT eyebrow embroidery.

What’s the difference then?

While normal eyebrow tattoo and embroidery would penetrate deep into your dermis layer of your skin causing much harm and scaring, Brows Enliven! only works on the epidermis layer of the skin and causes minimal intrusion.  This also means that the processes of Brows Enliven! does not hurt.

I was even more interested since my pain tolerance is very low. Andy showed me a couple photos of eyebrows that he did recently and I was impressed at how absolutely natural they look. More importantly with Brows Enliven, he was able to fill up gaps in brows and transform a lovely face into an even lovelier one.

Here’s an example.

This girl has good skin, nice hair and a proportional petite face. Her outfit is very pretty too! But her eyebrows are short and sparse so she probably needs to draw her eyebrows everyday to make sure she looks better. Even then, she can’t possibly have nicely drawn brows all the time.

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After Brows Enliven!

She looks so much better! The brows have been extended so naturally that you couldn’t have guessed she wasn’t born with it. Having a good set of eyebrows really frames the face and enhances whatever lovely features she originally had.

After seeing photos of some real customers with amazing results (photos can’t be put up here due to privacy issues), I was 80% sold on getting Brows Enliven! for myself. The last thing holding me back was the worry that the semi-permanent brows might look great on others but not for someone who doesn’t usually put on full make-up like me.

Andy suggested drawing on the eyebrows with a pencil the way he would do if it was a blade so I could get a better idea of how it would look on me. He told me that Korean eyebrows are the trend these days and I have the right face shape for it.

To illustrate, he took a magazine and showed me this.

Basically the trend is to have broad eyebrows with no arch at all in them.

I was gamed to give it a try.

Andy drew with his pencil and after he was done, I took one look at the mirror and was sold! It was incredibly natural with each stroke mimicking a hair strand and my features seem to stand out much better after my brows were done.

Andy drew with a black pencil so it’ll be more obvious for him to work on but I decided to go for a brown tone with my Brows Enliven! so that it wouldn’t look odd with my lightly coloured hair.

Numbing cream was applied on my brows and I had 10 minutes of shut-eye in the VIP treatment suite before Andy came in to work his magic on my brows.

With every customers, brand new sterile blades are used for hygiene purposes. Andy’s special technique uses 3 different size blades. Most semi-permanent eyebrow techniques only uses one blade to complete the process. However, Andy’s many years of experiences have taught him that the coarseness and texture of the hair at different part of your eyebrows are different, thus, different size blades mimicking different hair strands at different areas of your eyebrows would result in the most natural outcome.

The actual process was absolutely painless and very quick. Andy’s friendly chatter and nimble hands gives a warm and professional experience. I can’t even tell where my real eyebrows started and when it ended.

Here I am with my new eyebrows together with the HighBrow team!

Even right after the Brows Enliven! process, my eyebrows look natural and didn’t turn out dark and odd. Friends who have done semi-permanent eyebrow else where told me that it usually takes about 2 weeks before their eyebrows looked natural so they were impressed with how mine turned out.

The after care instructions were simple. Just apply the serum and conditioner on my brows for the next 3-5 days for the best effect.

Here’s the before photo of my untouched messy brows with little uneven gaps and the current eyebrows that I have. I just took the photo today so pardon my heavily dressed winter outerwear. It’s freezing in Helsinki, Finland.

I love how I have beautiful brows every single day with no fuss at all! Even without make-up, I look so much more presentable. I’m so glad that I met Andy and learnt about Brows Enliven! so that I won’t need to think about drawing my brows for the next 12 to 18 months. Even as it eventually fades, it will fade so evenly that it’ll just look as if  nothing was ever done to your brows.

I’ve highly recommended Brows Enliven! to a number of girl friends who are going to be heading down to HighBrow for their brows. If you are keen you should call them up and book soon. Especially since Chinese New Year is just round the corner.

Highbrow

PS – Shortly after doing my brows, a close gal pal was raving about having her semi-permanent brows done beautifully just as I was raving about mine. Turns out that both of us had our brows done by Andy! Just goes to show how incredibly talented he is!