If your eyes are the window to your soul, what does that make your eyelashes? The curtains? Awkward analogy aside, eyelashes make quite a difference in your appearance. Many women who don’t wear makeup at all will still insist they put on mascara before leaving the house. If you have blonde hair, it’s likely you’ll have blonde lashes too, so darkening them up can really define your eyes and draw attention to them.
You’ll see above that I’m fairly blessed when it comes to lashes – mine are naturally fairly dark and long (I have no mascara on in that picture!) If you’re not so lucky, I’ve got some tips for how to get really lush lashes.
Mascara is the first topic in Lush Lashes 101 (above I’m wearing the Eye of Horus mascara). But there are so many out there, it can be hard to know which one to go for!
Mascaras generally fall into two categories: lengthening and volumising. If you have short lashes, look for a formula that promises to lengthen your lashes. A mascara can’t make your eyelashes actually grow longer. Instead the pigments will coat the lash all the way to the tip, where the hair is often blonde and hard to see, thus giving the appearance of longer lashes.
If you’ve got long lashes but they’re looking a little sparse, try for a formula that promises to give volume. These mascaras add bulk to the width of your lashes, and also separate them. Most mascaras do a bit of both, but are generally optimised to either lengthen or volumise.
The other thing about mascaras? Their wands come in all shapes and sizes. The first wand pictured above is the one you’re probably most familiar with. Long bristles with a tapering end, the traditional mascara wand is great for getting pigment right to the root of your eyelashes. Those bristles also get right amongst your lashes, and act to separate them out, to avoid clumping.The tapered tip means you can focus application on specific lashes if you need to.
More and more brands are now releasing mascaras with plastic wands, with shorter bristles. These are great for wetter mascara formulas (avoiding clumping, again), and give good coverage for quite short eyelashes.
My eyelash secret comes in the form of this torture device above – the good old eyelash curler. I’ll admit, I owned an eyelash curler for several months before I got up the courage to use it! These really are foolproof, however, and make a huge difference to your eye look. Curling the lashes lifts them up and away from the eye, making your eyes look bigger and more awake. Nice!
You can get serums to help your eyelashes grow faster, but they are quite pricey. I am trialling one at the moment, but it’s early days yet so I can’t say for sure if it is making a difference. These are definitely worth a look, however, if you’re struggling with short or damaged eyelashes and want to see results.
