Here is a before and after photo taken with an iPhone in odd lighting (I'm lying under a bright aestheticians' lamp) - which is how many of the shots you see on brow blading websites are down - i.e; not very flattering and somewhat deceptive.

The aesthetician marks out your brow first - which is what those marks are in the first picture. The end result is below. Now - here's what's worth explaining to anyone interested in having this done:

1. the after pics make your brow look shiny and plasticky ....because you're loaded up with coconut oil and numbing cream. This is not how you look after the first hour or two. You need to use coconut oil on the brow area for about a week afterward to stop the skin from scabbing and flaking too badly (which it will do, because it has been cut, after all) . The bold stokes of the knife/pen thing fade fairly quickly too, and once your own brow hair is fluffed up a bit (and not plastered down with all of the cream and oil), are blended in well with your own hair.

2. the scabbing and flaking is actually not a bad thing, because it adds a bit of texture and fluffiness to the brow (the scabbing is just pale skin-coloured) . It brushes out and you are continually reapplying coconut oil until all is healed. I skipped the oil during the day if I wanted to wear eye makeup , and added brow powder to give more texture and depth . Many of my own eyebrow hair is white now, so I need to cover that with the powder to create a nicer colour.

So - this was a long way of saying that the pictures you see on-line don't always accurately reflect how you will look on a day-to-day basis- they just show what the brow looks like 5 minutes later. I find that the strokes at the end near the outside disappear faster - and that's because I sleep on my side and that skin is constantly being rubbed into my pillowcase (a good case for sleeping on your back if you can) . I have had them touched up (for free) twice now in the past year. It's pretty addicting once you have actual darker brows framed in to work with - and I'm now so aware of how aging a sparse and undefined brow can look . So there you go - all this for $350 Cdn with touch ups included. Lasts about a year or two. Does it hurt? Not really