Eyebrow shape, design and tattoo

I first met Katie about a month ago, she’d come along to get her eyebrows tattooed. When I first saw her I figured she had no eyebrows, and had been drawing them rather higher on her face than eyebrows should be. My first thought was “where am I going to put the numbing cream ?”.  I wiped off her pencilling only to discover very fine tinted hair, I was not expecting that.  Katie did not remember having eyebrow hair lower down on her brow bone, the pencilling she’d done today was her normal style.

There was no easy way of saying what I wanted, so… “Can I show you something… (quick bit of eyebrow pencilling)  …That’s where I want to put your eyebrows” says I.  “Oh, that does look strange” says she.  The poor woman, she’d only been with me for less than 10 minutes and I’d just completely thrown her.

To get such a response, there was no way a responsible person would carry on and tattoo her eyebrows that day.  I said to Katie that today would be best spent as an Eyebrow Shape and Design session and she agreed.  After some eyebrow tinkering we came up with a good shape, taking photos I emailed to her later, and her mum at home to give an opinion, Katie was pleased we hadn’t tattooed them that day, but she still wasn’t sure of this new look.

Can you imagine someone not just saying to you, but showing you, that your look was wasn’t the best, and I even went so far as to say that had she wanted them tattooed on the way they were, I wouldn’t have done it… that’s a bit heavy to comprehend, and for me to say to be honest.  Probably best I say now that I’m all for someone showing individual style, and if you’ve seen my portfolio, there’s some wonderfully styled as well as very natural eyebrow shapes I’ve created, and I pride myself on creating shapes that work on faces.

After almost a month of Katie eyebrow shape experimenting, with friends now giving opinions and advice, yesterday was tattoo day.  Yes her eyebrows were a little better shaped, but the surprise was to come when I wiped off her pencilling,  Eyebrow hair, not fluff, proper eyebrow hair !  Turns out she’d been getting her eyebrows threaded for years and they must have been threading off her eyebrow hair ?! leaving just the fluffy top bit ?? that poor Katie thought was her only eyebrow hair.

I don’t need to say how important it was for me to get these eyebrows right for Katie, she was still very unsure and wanted to be absolutely happy with the shape, but I had to remind her that she couldn’t trust herself to do a good shape, and there had to be some faith here in what I was going to be doing.  She’d already had experience of my work, and had photos to look back on, so I wasn’t taking full control with her not knowing what I could do.

So, we tattooed Katie’s eyebrows, and, as you can see, she was happy and relieved when we’d done.  She apologised for being difficult, but come on, this was a lot of change to get used to.  There’s the top up to do next month, and I know she’s going to be having some serious eyebrow in the mirror time these weeks ahead, but I’m confident she’ll be pleased with her new eyebrows, and am looking forward to hearing the reactions she’s noticed to them… “Will this be life changing ?” she asked me at the start yesterday… I’ll let you know.