Jacque Lumsden has her eyelashes dyed by Jennie Washburn of Lemon Bliss Spa at The Oread, 1200 Oread Ave.

Jacque Lumsden has her eyelashes dyed by Jennie Washburn of Lemon Bliss Spa at The Oread, 1200 Oread Ave.

The results post-tinting.

Some women never leave home without a coat or two of mascara on their lashes. But, after an hour or two in sultry weather, their eyes can resemble Rocky Raccoon after a rainstorm. Not a good look on anyone. Except raccoons, maybe.

Enter eyelash tinting, a relatively new trend in cosmetics, that temporarily dyes the eyelashes.

“It’s great, especially in the summertime, if you don’t want to have to wear mascara but you still want your eyes to have that dark, rich color,” says Jennie Washburn, an esthetician at Lemon Bliss Spa at The Oread.

“If you want length you still do, but if all you’re trying to do is define the eye area, you can use a little liner and you’ve got the same look as if you’ve used a mascara.”

The treatment, which costs $15 at Lemon Bliss, lasts about three weeks and is considered safe when applied by a skilled technician. Washburn uses an FDA-approved vegetable-based tint that is made specifically for lashes.

“You lie down, the lid is shut, and I put a little pad under your bottom lash,” Washburn explains. “Then, I brush it on thick enough and, by doing so, get the bottom lashes, too. The pad keeps it off the skin. It sets for a couple of minutes, then I wash it off. Sometimes, it can sting, but it goes away like that.”

Lawrence resident Margene Swarts, signed up for a lash tint in hopes of ditching her mascara wand forever.

“I tried it, and I liked it all right — it made my lashes thicker, and I was happy with the way it looked — but you have to keep doing it,” Swarts says. “And it wasn’t like it was so expensive, but it was enough expensive that I thought, ‘Eh.'”

Brows, too

Swarts did not continue lash treatments, but she faithfully gets her eyebrows colored when she has her monthly facial.

“I do (that) because my brows are so pale,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, it’s like they have no color. I look like I have none if I don’t color them, and I still do a little bit with a brush or a pencil.”

Washburn say eyebrow tinting is especially appealing to people with blonder or lighter hair whose brows sometimes appear invisible. She says coloring the brow can make it look fuller and bring a face to life.

“Eyebrows define how you look,” she says. “They can show whether you look surprised or angry, or any of those emotions. The wrong brow can give you the wrong emotion. A good brow shaping just opens up the face.”

Desiree Strecker, stylist and owner of Headlines, 520 W. 23rd St., says she’ll sometimes suggest brow tinting to a client if she notices she’s using a lot of brow pencil.

“I usually do it when I’m coloring their hair,” Strecker says. “Just throwing some color on there is super easy, and it darkens it up for a lot longer. People usually like it because they don’t have to deal with the pencil all the time.”

While eyebrow tints run the gamut of colors from light to dark, Washburn says most eyelash tints are black, although she offers a dark blue shade as well.

Strecker typically applies the same color to the brows as she puts on a client’s hair. For hair with lowlights and highlights, she tends to go a shade darker, depending on the situation and a woman’s skin tone.

“I also have a couple of clients that get more of a red tone in their hair,” she adds, “so I’ll put that in their brows because they don’t have any red in their brows and it just brings it all together.”

Lash Extensions

Women who are willing to go to great lengths to get the fluttering lashes of their dreams may want to consider lash extensions.

Traci Rainbolt, a stylist at Images, 511 W. Ninth St., explains how it’s done.

“It’s a synthetic lash that I go through and attach to every one of your eyelashes using a hypoallergenic, medical-grade glue. People usually go a couple centimeters up to a quarter-inch longer than their natural lash.”

The process takes around 2 to 2 1/2 hours and costs $250 for your first full set.

Because the eyelash growth cycle is between four to eight weeks, more extensions are needed to maintain the lush look.

“You need to come in every two or three weeks to get them filled, just like a synthetic fingernail,” Rainbolt says, “and that’s $35 for a two-week fill and $45 for a three-week fill.”

Cost considerations aside, lash extensions aren’t for everyone.

“If you’re a hands-on person who is rubbing or touching your eyes all the time, or have sensitive eyes, this probably isn’t for you,” Rainbolt says.

Latisse

Dr. John Harvat, an optometrist with The Eye Doctors, 2600 Iowa, is seeing an increased demand from his patients for a drug that lengthens, thickens and darkens the lashes.

“It’s called Latisse, and it’s a glaucoma drug that they just got FDA-approved for extending eyelashes,” he explains. “We found as we were using it to treat people with glaucoma, it was making their eyelashes grow.”

The cost for Latisse is $80 to $100 for a two-month supply.

“They put it in these little individual vials and you use it every night, just like mascara,” he says. “You put it on with a little wand and you rub it along the edge of the eyelashes on the upper eye lid. Within a couple of weeks, you start to see a difference. And you get the full effect in about four months.”