BROW BOOSTING MICROBLADING with KAREN BETTS
The ageing process does weird stuff to your beauty routine. Changes happen very gradually and then one morning you wake up with an issue you haven’t had to deal with before. On this occasion the problem was my eyebrows. At a moment in time when defined brows are very much in fashion, mine have disappeared. Reading an interview with Helen Mirren, she enthused about having hers microbladed and I thought “Well if it’s good enough for Helen, I’ll give that a go!” Our Beauty Director Rosie Green makes a very big deal about researching the practitioner before you have any drastic cosmetic treatment. Having a tattoo on your face (as essentially that’s what microblading is) definitely qualifies as drastic so I booked in with the top microblader Karen Betts. To say I was nervous about having this done is a bit of an understatement and my husband was absolutely horrified. But brows frame your face and lift your eyes, and it was getting trickier and trickier to fill my sparse ones in. Karen’s assistant Jane met with me first to talk me through aftercare and reassure me that Karen was very good at giving clients exactly what they want. Although she invented HD brows – and that’s what a lot of younger women want – she is also more than happy to create a more natural look. Phew! Once on the couch Karen has a good look at my brows and we talk at length about what I have in mind. She then draws in the brows and shows me for approval. The actual procedure is done with a tiny blade and takes about 20 minutes. A numbing cream is applied beforehand so it hardly hurts at all. Karen explains that my brows will look darker for about five days straight afterwards (which makes me fear for my husband’s reaction when I get home!), but because I’ve gone for a natural look, the final result isn’t too dark at all. When I sit up and look in the mirror I basically have my old eyebrows back. I am totally delighted. Over the next few weeks you have to look after your brows how you would any tattoo. They have to be kept dry and they flake slightly as they heal. Six weeks after the first treatment you go back so Karen can fill in any sparse areas, and then your brows are sorted for at least a year. I now wake up in the morning with the brows I had at 21 and it’s so brilliant. That’s one less beauty issue to deal with!