I’ve always had trouble finding products to suit my eyebrows, cruelty-free or otherwise. In fact, I’ve never found a match before. The thing is that my eyebrows are SO blonde that any of the products designed for blonde eyebrows tend to be too warm. Yes, orange eyebrows have been my destiny for many years and for that reason I’ve never used any products on my eyebrows before. So why would I start now?
Well, the good news is that my cruelty-free journey has led me to some excellent budget make-up brands that I’d never tried before. And, interestingly enough, the eyebrow products they produce are considerably less orange than other blonde eyebrow products I’ve used in the past. I tried three different types of products before finding my ideal colour match so I thought I’d let you know how I got on with each of them.
Attempt number 1 was the MUA Brow Define brush-on brow colour. It’s like a mascara wand for eyebrows and I thought it could be a good two-in-one; taming hair and adding colour. It was exactly that, but for me it added a little bit too much colour. It picked up and coated the hairs rather than adding colour to my skin, so it looked much more natural than a pencil. But it was still a bit too dark for me. I can’t emphasise how very fair my eyebrow hairs are so it might be okay for you, and for blondes who want to go a little stronger on their eyebrows, it would be ideal. But as it was only £3 and I’d bought it on a 3-for-the-price-of-2 deal, I wasn’t worried about wasting money so I passed it on to my sister and moved on to this…
The £1 MUA blonde eyebrow pencil. It’s much easier to control the pencil in terms of precision, so I could draw wispy lines to replicate hairs (so long as the pencil is super-sharp). Plus, there’s a brush on the end of the pencil to feather out the colour if needed. Still the tone of this blonde was too warm for my ashy pale eyebrows and made them a tiny bit darker than I would have liked. I suppose I’m still getting used to seeing my eyebrows after all these years so I felt it made me look a little surprised, although in reality it probably looked really natural. Even so, I wasn’t completely happy with the pencil so I tried a powder.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!
I took a chance on the Freedom Duo eyebrow palette and ordered it online because I couldn’t find it in Superdrug stores to test. I prefer to look at the product in the shop and try the colour before I buy. But seeing as the last two products looked okay when I tested them on the back of my hand but didn’t work particularly well on my eyebrows I decided to go for it anyway. It cost £3 and I chose it in the blonde shade, which actually contains two colours to mix-and-match to get the perfect colour. In fact, the ‘Freedom Pro’ £3.50 option contains four colours to mix, but these looked a little to dark for me. Although, when looking at a screen, how can you really tell?When I collected my order in Superdrug I was excited to try it out and rummaged around in my makeup collection for a suitable brush to apply it with. In the end I used a very fine lip-liner brush, but I might invest in a proper eyebrow brush now that I know that I’m happy with the colour. The palest tone is very a taupe-y blonde and it suited my ash-blonde eyebrows perfectly. Finally, they’re not orange! The deeper colour is good for adding extra definition to the arches of the brows, but I can’t see myself using it that often, even though it’s still the right tone for me. I’m happy to have found just one colour that works, let alone two – I can finally try to even out those brows!
I bet this review would have carried on forever if I hadn’t found the Freedom palette. Once I’d found the right shade I stopped searching so there may be other fabulous cruelty-free eyebrow products out there that are just right for your shade of blonde. And of course I have no experience of the darker colours in these collections so please do leave comment below to tell us all which CF products you’ve found to be best for you, because it may help someone else to find their ideal colour match too!
Lastly, I ordered the Little Book of Cruelty-Free from Cruelty-Free International and it’s a great little pocket-sized resource to help you know what’s good and what’s not when you’re out shopping. I’ve kept it in my handbag (which explains the crinkles!) and have referred to it a few times on recent shopping trips. It’s a free publication that you can order online, but you could always leave a donation to help Cruelty-Free International if you’d like to. It’s updated yearly with over 600 certified brands listed to make it easy to find cruelty-free cosmetics and cleaning products.
