Brow pencil

For Perfectly Defined brows, take a look at the Bobbi Brown Long-Wear Brow Pencil

September 4, 2015 Paris B 30 Comments

Not long after I found my holy grail (HG) brow pencil, my brow-pencil-seeking radar picked up a similar looking product from Bobbi Brown. Life’s funny that way. When it rains, it pours! You wait for a bus for an hour and suddenly 3 show up. Or you search and search for your HG brow pencil and just as you find it, another pops up for consideration!

As luck would have it, one of the Bobbi Brown Perfectly Defined Long-Wear Brow Pencil found its way into my hands, and I took it for a long long spin. Almost 2 months. I just had to figure out if I might replace my HG brow pencil with something available locally.

The Bobbi Brown Perfectly Defined Long-Wear Brow Pencil comes in 8 shades, and mine was Mahogany, which is described as a “mid-tone ash brown”. This implies that it has a slight grey tone, which is something I favour as I feel it’s more natural and flattering.

This is also a retractable, slanted brow pencil, as you will see below, and comes in a very handy packaging and size with the pencil at one end, and a spoolie brush at the other. But did it replace my HG?

With the Hourglass Arch Brow Sculpting Pencil in hand I’ve found my Holy Grail

June 22, 2015 Paris B 35 Comments

When I first started taking care of my brows and enhancing them through the use of brow pencils, I jumped in straight into the deep end. It was the Shu Uemura Hard Pencil 9 that made me appreciate the importance of a good brow, and I never looked back. It was so good, I even reviewed it twice, right here on the blog! A first, even for me.

What I liked about it was the very user-friendly angled point, or as Shu Uemura will have you believe, sword point, that makes pencilling in the brows quite a breeze. The problem however, is that I never got the hang of sharpening it myself. Yes, Shu Uemura boutiques and counters offer this sharpening service for free and I availed of it for years on end. But my last few experiences at the counter left me wanting. My pencils will go in a certain length, and when I return to collect them, inches have been sliced off. I’ve seen the sharpening at work first hand, and even tried my hand at it and I can safely say that it doesn’t take inches off each time, unless it breaks, or you’re incompetent like me. So I got pissed off, and decided to look elsewhere.

I wanted something with the same angled shape, but that didn’t need me to entrust it into the hands of another, whether competent or incompetent, to get it into that shape. I looked around for a bit, tried a few different retractable options here and there but one day, after reading raves of the Hourglass Arch Brow Sculpting Pencil, I decided to have a go at it on one of my Net-a-Porter orders.

I didn’t quite know what to expect if I’m to be honest. I also wasn’t sure which colour to pick since we don’t have an Hourglass counter here and I wasn’t even sure of what the colours would look like. Sunny of Mostly Sunny’s review helped me with that, but I eventually bit the bullet and went with Soft Brunette.

Ladies and gents, meet my favourite-est brow pencil. Ever. Pricey for us hapless Malaysians and our sh-Ringgit, but so good, I haven’t looked or thought about looking elsewhere since I got it almost 10 months ago. It’s SO. GOOD! 😀

Beauty Scenario Vol. 1: You want your makeup to last the whole day. What do you use?

June 16, 2015 Paris B 28 Comments

Hi friends!

I’m kicking off this new series today, (I didn’t want to call it a series, but it’ll be a recurring topic so I think that’s what a series is right?) which I’ll call “Beauty Scenario”. What it basically is, is a post where I pose a beauty related scenario, whether based on my own experiences, or based on questions I get from all of you curious cats, and we all get to gather around and have a good ol’ jaw about what YOU would do in that scenario.

You might be wondering how this is different from the other discussive “Your Say” posts that I have from time to time. Well, those tend to run a gamut of anything that enters my head from tampons to nosy questions about whether you shower in the mornings; but I thought we’d enjoy and benefit from something that’s a little more focused on beauty, since this IS supposed to be a “beauty blog” after all right? LOL!

I invite you to pose your own beauty scenario (you can always email me at parisb@mywomenstuff.com if you don’t want to ask it publicly in the comments) and I’ll bring it up the next time around 🙂

To kick things off, here’s a topic we see arise quite often.

If you want your makeup to last all day or for a few hours without melting off, what are the products you would use?

This is a real concern in our sort of tropical heat and humidity and while it will naturally depend on the situation and our skin types, here are my picks and why I pick them! Please do share yours – we’ll all learn from each other here 🙂

ZA Ever Brows : The affordable, effective brow pencil that just works!

March 5, 2014 Paris B 70 Comments

I have great love for Shu Uemura Hard 9 Brow pencils especially the way they are beautifully shaped into that sword shape that makes it a breeze to pencil in brows. It was so good, I reviewed it twice, right on this blog right here.

I never got the hang of sharpening and shaping it myself so I always send mine in to a Shu Uemura store/counter, which is a complimentary service, and this is where I ran into problems. I get wildly differing service and shapes of my brow pencils at different counters/stores. Generally, the Mid Valley Megamall store is efficient and friendly and my pencils come back looking good and well shaped. The counter at Pavilion KL is horrible. My pencils always come back looking 2 inches shorter than when I left them there and the service is surly. I wonder what they do to them – eat them? But recently, even the Mid Valley store failed me with quite ugly looking pencils so I got a wee bit fed up. I needed some brow pencils that didn’t need sharpening!

A chance visit to a Watson’s store saw me contemplating the ZA Cosmetics counter and a friendly sales assistant asked if I might be interested in some of their products.

One thing led to another and I walked away with the ZA Ever Brows – a slim retractable brow pencil that costs a fraction of what Shu Uemura costs.

And you know what? I like it! I’ve been using mine for a while, used interchangably with the ones from Shu Uemura and I’m quite happy with this one 🙂

Brow pencil

The fun and previews happen on Instagram @parisbmws