Eyelash extensions

Eyelash extensions..... beautiful aren't they?

Makes you think wow, that's awesome. I could amp up my beauty quota with this fabulous addition.

Don't do it.

I repeat. Don't do it.

Yep I've had this done and by all means, it looked freaking amazing. But it is SO hard to maintain and it's so expensive that it's SO not worth it.

Alright, so I believe this cost me at least $150, if not more. You get a choice of how long the lashes will be - generally you don't go super long because you'll look like a show girl. And probably a male show girl. You go with the shorter ones, short to medium. And yes, you can trim them after it's done... if you are game.

I went short to medium length. Then you have to decide how many you want, and how thick you want it to look. I think I went a "full set" but that doesn't mean they go on every lash, the beauty therapist does their thing and decides when you have enough. I think you get charged according to how many they use... maybe.

So you go in and immediately you can tell that the beauty therapist is thinking "wow this chick has money to burn". You have the initial chat about lenght, fullness etc.

The procedure itself, they have to clean off any makeup and then basically they are glueing each extension on to an individual eyelash of yours. The fake extension bit - you get told all this stuff about it being awesome "so soft" "just like real". I felt them before they went on and yep that's all true. (there's more to it though).


So it's a long process with the poor beautician girl glueing away at your eyelashes. It's a long time to have to have your eyes closed and, like with the perming, you can tell there is chemicals near your eye.

So when it's done again, as with the perm, you have difficulty opening your eyes. But this is way worse. Your eyes feel like they are glued together, and kind of feel a bit heavier than they were before. It took a fair bit of gentle wiping to be able to get my eyes fully open, and my eyesite was all blurry by this stage.

I look in the mirror and WOW amazing. At this point I'm thinking - this is so cool!!
But something in the eyes of the beautician when I'm paying tells me there may be more to it.



After care. Sigh.

1. You have to sleep on your back because your eyes CAN NOT touch the pillow. Even if you have a satin pillow. You MUST sleep with your face up. Why? Because if you go smooshing your face into the pillow, you will kink the extensions. And there is no coming back from that. I had many nights of no sleep, then gave in and kinked an eyelash - I had to pull it off.
   
   Oh and when I say pull it off - you *can* get it off and keep your normal eyelash, you just have to be careful.
   
   
2. Even though I had the short/medium - I couldn't wear glasses or sunnies because those babies kept banging against the lenses. It doesn't sound like a big deal but trust me it was super annoying.
   
   But hey, I looked awesome. Boo yah. Who cares....... But wait.
   
   
3. Remember how I said the extensions were soft and lovely? They are. But glue isn't. And to get that sucker to stay on your eyelash, it takes a good 3mm of glue at least. And that 3mm section gets harder and harder every day. Suddenly you have these mega hard eyelashes that you can't touch, you can't sleep on, and you can't even hug someone for fear they will smoosh your face into their shoulder and heaven forbid - kink or knock off one of your precious precious lashes.
   
   
4. Sure. You can get "refills". But they cost a fortune. And the time you need to get it done is annoying. So you end up with some falling off every now and then. Yep you'll definitely know it has fallen off because suddenly you see this way thicker than normal eyelash in the sink, and it's as hard as a toenail. And you see a gap in your "full" set of lashes. Yeh you can get away with that for the most part... but after a while it starts to become obvious... which leads me to....
   
   
5. You pull them all out.I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted sleep, I wanted to have normal huggy human interaction, I wanted to not feel as if I had a giant layer of plastic above my eye.I had to pull them out individually.I kept all my original lashes, but washed a couple hundred dollars down the drain. I believe I held out with them for 3 weeks?? That was pretty good because I really wanted to get rid of them well before that. And a little bit of me died everytime one fell out or got kinked. Sigh.
   
   
   

But I did look pretty..... so pretty............ *sob*