Tweeze Freeze

You know how hard it is not to touch your brows between waxing! These insolent little stragglers show up and as you reach for your Tweezerman, you remember your brow sylist's warning to let them grow out and recover from your LAST over-zealous tweeze-fest (note to self: Chardonnay and plucking don't mix). So I was a good girl and waited until the growth was too much to bear and made an appointment at the Anastasia brow studio at Sephora on 5th Avenue.

First, my tech Sonia praised both my self-restraint and my brows in general. Then she showed me the three points in a well-shaped brow. 1. Find the start of the brow by tracing up vertically from the side of the nose. 2 The end point is found when you make a line from the nose to the outer corner of the eye. 3 The high point of the arch is just outside your iris. As Sonia traced these lines on me, she marked the three points with a bit of dark powder on a smudger brush.

Points thus established, she then selected the right stencil for me. I am the 'high arch'. The stencil is applied over the brows and aligned with the three points. Next she colored in the stencil with dark powder. The idea is to see what your brow will look like before waxing. Once you're happy, she removes all hair that's outside the lines. Her ultra-precision was amazing, and she even left a few hairs untouched so they can grow in and replace what I'd mistakenly removed. the finishing touch was trimming my brows with scissors so they were neat and trim.

My brows looked great, perfectly shaped for my face and beautifully symmetrical (something I can rarely achieve). But that was not the end! No, she applied concealer to cover the redness, filled in the brows with powder with a stiff angled brush, and drew ribbons of highlighter underneath to show off my perfect arches. The makeup created a stronger brow look than I'm used to, but I think I dig it. I do plan to purchase the under-brow "Eye Lights Shimmer" stick - it added so much light to my face!

She suggested that I come back in 6-8 weeks, but said I could pop in for free touch-ups in between... anything to stop me from being a do-it-myself brow gal (and, of course, to keep me as a client)!

Price: $32 plus tip. Verdict: no spa-like experience,this: she was a little rough at times. But I loved the attention to detail with measuring and stencilling. The results are great. I'll be back.

If you ARE a DIY yourself gal, you can get a great system for home use! Get Anastasia's All About Brows Kit ($141 value for $75) and you can replicate the steps above at home. Just put the wine glass down first!

Images from Sephora.com , except the 3-point guide is from Laurie Anne Lamothe, inspirational coach.