Microblading for perfect eyebrows, permanent makeup are latest beauty trends

Gone are the days of the pencil-thin, "sharpie" eyebrow.

Gone, too, are the days of frequent trips to the salon for an eyebrow wax.

Mircoblading is the beauty trend of the moment, and Alicia Shapira can hardly keep up.

On Friday, clients at Vintage Lashes in Naples were booked back to back, and Shapira worked under the studio's bright lights to reconstruct eyebrows or create them from scratch.

"Oh, it's huge," Shapira, an esthetician, said of the latest trend.

"What’s happening is that a lot of people are watching TV and seeing the Kardashians and people with these big brows, so a lot of people when they were younger, they would shave their brows or pluck them too much, and what ended up happening was they lost a lot of hair.

"Everyone is like, 'Oh my gosh, these people have beautiful brows, how can I get that?' "

In comes Shapira, licensed in several cosmetic techniques:

• permanent makeup, including upper and lower eyeliner, lipliner and lip shading;
• hair simluation for men and women;
• paramedical micropigmentation, like 3D nipples and areola tatto and repigmentation for breast cancer survivors;
• microneedling, which breaks down old scar tissue to stimulate new growth, treating acne scars, wrinkles and stretch marks;
• tattoo removal;
• microblading, the creation of permanent eyebrows. 

Micoblading is a relatively painless procedure, Shapira said, and it's her most popular service.

Permanent makeup is a close second.

"Everybody wants this," she said. "The brow really does define the face."

Some clients come to her after a bad experience at another studio, so Shapira removes the permanent eyebrow in a series of sessions and eventually starts the brow over again.

Others need to fill in missing spots or maybe an entirely new brow, such as after chemotherapy.

"That’s when I have to be a little bit more artistic, because I literally have to draw their brow on completely," Shapira said.

The process of microblading starts with a sketch. Using an eyebrow pencil and a ruler, Shapira stencils on the shape of the brow. She selects the pigment color based on the client's natural hair color from her collection of blondes, golds and browns.

Next, she applies a series of creams — benzocaine, lidocaine, tetracaine and epinephrine — to numb the skin and prevent bleeding.

Shapira then uses a blade with 18 tiny needles to get into the first layer of the skin, depositing the pigment and creating tiny, crisp hair strokes; it even looks like actual hair.

The blade makes a scratchy sound, but the procedure is painless. A few hours later, the client has a new pair of eyebrows.

It takes about seven to 10 days for the realistic hair strokes to be more apparent, Shapira said. Four weeks later, Shapira can touch up the eyebrows to make them wider, longer or fill in any spots, per the client's request.

The eyebrows can last up to three years. A client who shaves their eyebrows entirely before a microblading procedure can make theirs last five to seven years.

A former speech and language pathologist, Shapira said she is fascinated by the medical side of her services. She started getting certification about six years ago, but her business didn't pick up until about the last three years.

Every Friday and Saturday, Shapira works at Vintage Lashes, which offers last extensions and other aesthetic services. The rest of the week, she works in Fort Lauderdale, but she plans to work in Naples full-time soon.

Shapira's most rewarding work, she said, is to fix lips made crooked by a stroke or Parkinson's disease, or the tattooed nipples and areolas for breast cancer survivors.

"It makes people feel good about themselves," she said.

Other times, clients just need corrective microblading because of a botched procedure at another salon.

"It’s sad because there are a lot of people out there that are doing this (procedure) and they don’t know what they’re doing, and so (clients) come to me. ...," Shapira said.

"It’s a beautiful procedure. I love it."

Vintage Lashes

• www.vintagelashes.com
• 239-263-1050
• 89 Ninth St. S., Naples