Confession time: I'll be 40 this year, and I've never contoured my eyebrows (or anything else, for that matter). I had NO IDEA how to do it. My eyebrow routine is to pluck the strays when they show up and call it good. But I do like the way it looks on other women when they've contoured their eyebrows really well – when I saw some before & after pictures, I was surprised at how much difference it can make! And this kit from Aesthetica looked like it might be simple enough to use for even someone with zero experience with eyebrow contouring, so I decided to give it a try.

This kit comes with an instructional booklet, an eyebrow "blueprint," a bunch of eyebrow stencils of varying shapes and thicknesses, six different shades of eyebrow powder (mix and match), a brush/comb, miniature tweezers, eyebrow wax, and highlighter – all in a mirrored compact. I read the instructions, watched the tutorial video on their website (there's a link to it on the instruction booklet, but note that when you go to look at the tutorial, the URL is a .me address, not a .com), took a deep breath, and started contouring.

Step one is to find the template that most closely matches your natural brow shape, and then use the powder(s) that match your natural brow color to define and fill your brows in. This is when it really hit home for me that I have two distinctly differently shaped eyebrows, but I made it work. After that, you tweeze away the hairs outside of the stenciled/filled areas. I chose not to fully tweeze my eyebrows into shape – I have five sons (and the youngest is just two months old), I know I don't have the time or inclination to keep up with that level of maintenance right now. So I just tweezed away the random stray hairs that were way outside of my natural eyebrow shape. I also found it easier to use my own full-size tweezers to do this. The included tweezers would probably work in a pinch, but they're significantly shorter than standard tweezers and I found them difficult to use for that reason. So after stenciling and shaping, you use the wax to set your eyebrows, and finally use the highlighter under your brows to finish off your look.

Overall, I found this kit pretty simple to use – it's going to take me some practice to get good at it, but I feel like I got "acceptable for going out in public" results with my very first trial run. (And remember, this is the first time I've ever tried to contour my eyebrows). I think if I were willing to take the plunge and tweeze my eyebrows into thinner matching arches that I'd be even happier with the results. The six shades of powder and five stencil shapes mean this kit should work for just about anybody (even if you're not willing to tweeze your eyebrows into utter submission). I'm adding in before & after pictures of my first attempt at using this kit to my review – I'm not wearing any other makeup in these pictures, I didn't even use primer or foundation first since it was a practice run. So this is the results I achieved my first time using this kit without having ever contoured (or even filled) my eyebrows before.

I received this product at a discount in exchange for my honest review; all opinions are my own.