Fiber mascara has become all the rage.  I love the idea of it.  But I’m kind of stubborn — I really want brown (or black-brown), and nobody sells it in anything other than black — so I’ve sort of refused to buy it. It occurred to me that if I could figure out what to use for the fibers, I could just do it myself.  A little bit of internet research gave me the answers I needed, and here are my initial results.

The “Sticky” Layer

The first thing necessary to make this work is the initial layer that the fibers stick to.  The commercial varieties are full of all kinds of “junk” (yes, even the “natural” ones), but the core element seems to be beeswax.  Now, I could concoct my own beeswax-containing substance, but I decided to start with what I already have.

Un-petroleum jelly has a beeswax base, but is “thinned” with oils to a consistency more like we want, so I started with that.  Keep in mind here that I don’t have any of this in mascara tubes yet.  (I didn’t want to waste the tubes with something too experimental.  I figured once I had something that worked, I’d put it in the tubes.)  So the application is a bit imperfect because I was rubbing this stuff into the brush with my fingers.  However, this did work.

It’s a little too thick for this purpose, though — it got a bit “clumpy.” That meant that the fibers kind of clumped, too, and they “shed” on my cheeks later in the day.

So my next attempt was jojoba oil.  I honestly thought this was likely to be too thin, but jojoba oil is technically a wax, so I figured I’d give it a whirl.  It worked.  It worked pretty well, actually.  I still think it’s a tad on the thin side, and I think the best option will be jojoba oil with a smidgeon of the un-petroleum jelly mixed in to thicken it just a little, but that will have to wait for my tubes to show up.

I tried and tried to get a good photo, and I just couldn’t do it.  What we see in person is just not coming through in the photos.  However, this does do the trick.  In the picture above, my right eye (the viewer’s left) is the un-petroleum jelly version; the other eye is the jojoba version.  (I have fairly dark, thick lashes to begin with, so I’m curious to see what this looks like on someone with less obvious lashes.  I think that’s also why I had a hard time getting a good before-and-after shot.)

The Fibers

The other necessity is, of course, the fibers themselves.  I was so excited when I found these!  These fibers are natural, powder-fine, designed specifically for filling in thin hair, and come in a variety of colors. Perfect!

Unless you have nearly-black hair, I would recommend that even if you want “black,” you go with dark brown.  The dark brown is really dark – almost black, but not quite so harsh.  There are other options, too, though, and if your lashes are naturally very fair, you might want something lighter.  Doing it yourself also allows for the possibility of mixing colors.  (You can buy larger containers than the one I linked to, once you know you have the color(s) you want.)

I’m sure this will work a lot better once I can put it in the mascara tube!  What I did for now is just shake out a little pile onto a paper towel and press the brush into the pile.