5 Lash Hacks That Save You Time, But Don't Reduce the Quality of Your Work!
Once you’ve gotten to grips with the basics of eyelash extensions, it’s quite normal to want to look for ways to make your job and your life a little easier. What’s important is that you don’t simply start to cut corners, otherwise you run the risk of jeopardizing your clients’ experience with you and their retention! With that in mind, here are some of our favorite lash hacks which will change the game, without spoiling the quality of your work.
Taping Back Method: Lash Fill Edition
There are lots of different hacks involving taping back the lashes, and while they’re useful to know eventually, when you’re just starting out it’s FAR better to practice isolation and placement on the lashes just as they are, because then you’re prepared for anything. If you always tape back all of the lashes and then one day find your tape has gone missing, you’re going to have a very bad day.
Taping back during lash fills though is a time saver and it’s fine to do at any stage as long as you’re making sure you’re actually a pro at isolation during full sets – it’s easier to isolate during fills as the covered lashes are easier for you to move, and the uncovered lashes are a bit more obvious.
During fills, once you’ve removed the grown out lashes and completed your pretreatment routine, take a piece of tape and pull back the covered lashes so that only the bare lashes are showing. Be careful to only let the tape rest on the lashes and only secure it at the ends where it’s touching the eyelids so that it’s easy for you to remove at the end of treatment.
When you do come to remove it, use one pair of tweezers to hold the lashes in place and use the other pair to slowly and gently peel the tape back, careful not to pull off any of those lashes.
Give the set a brush and your lashes are good as new!
Become An Inner Corner Icon
Inner corners can be notoriously difficult to access, and can cause stress to even the most seasoned of Lash Technicians! They’re tricky to access and lash for a few reasons – firstly, they tend to be finer and shorter than other lashes, and can grow very close together. They also tend to grow downwards which means they lay against the under eye patches, and can get stuck to them if we just place lashes on them like we do with other lashes in the lash line.
There are two things that you can do with tape to help you out here, firstly attach one end of the tape to the eyelid and gently pull it towards you, lifting the lashes away from the under eye patch and making them easier to access. When you do this, remember to take a lash mirror and check that the eyes aren’t open – no-one wantsred eyes after lash extensions!
The second way to use tape to help you access those inner corners is to pull the eyelid over toward the outer corners to separate dense inner corner lashes. It’s best to do this when you’ve already drawn your lash map, as you’re going to need to make markings on the eyelid with your mapping pen in line with your lash map so that the lengths and curls you apply are in the right place and result in a good looking lash set.
Make Colored Lashes POP!
Colored Lash Extensions are rising in popularity – you love them, we love them, our clients love them. We all know that using a clear lash glue is going to give us a seamless bond, but did you know that you can add to that seamless effect by hiding the natural lashes?
When you come to apply the extensions, apply them from underneath the natural lashes instead of from the top as you do more often than not. By doing this, the lash extensions are all that will be seen when your client opens their eyes at the end of treatment, and you’ll have a much more vibrant effect from your colored lash sets!
BY THE WAY… Looking for some colored lash extensions mapping inspo? Check outthis blog post next!
Become A Pre-Treatment PRO!
Lash Extensions Pre-Treatment is super important for so many reasons, but as beginners, it can actually be quite tricky to really cleanse the lashes all the way to the root with Cleanser and Primer – we’re being so careful to not get any on the skin or in the client’s eyes that we run the risk of missing the glue bonding area entirely, which isn’t going to help at all with our retention.
If this is something that worries you, take a wooden waxing stick (the kind for eyebrow waxing, or the kind of wooden stick you stir your coffee with at takeout places) and place it underneath the lashes, then using one microfibre cleansing brush clean the lashes by pressing them into the stick. By doing this, you reduce the risk of any product getting into the client’s eye, saving money on your brushes, and reducing the amount of single-use plastic you use during each treatment by half!
PSST! Want to be even more eco-friendly? Swap microfiber brushes for reusable metal handles and disposable cleansing brushes! The brush heads are wider giving you more control, the handles are made from stainless steel so can be sterilized in an autoclave, and they reduce your single-use plastic consumption by 80% compared to using completely disposable brushes! Big list of wins.
Flickery Eyelids = Chemical Burns!
Any time your clients’ eyes open during their treatment they are at risk of getting a chemical burn from the lash glue fumes. It’s really common to see clients and lash technicians alike asking why lash glue burns, and the simple answer is that it’s due to the cyanoacrylate fumes in the lash extensions glue. The slightly expanded answer is that if the eyes are completely closed during treatment, cyanoacrylate won’t be able to get into the eyes and there will be no burning at all, which in turn means no red eyes after lash extensions! Your completed lash set photos will be stunning, and your clients won’t have any discomfort during treatment.
Flickery eyes can happen for a number of reasons and can be prevented in a lot of cases, but if your client’s eyelids are flickering for any reason during treatment, you need to fix it!
One of the simplest ways to fix this is to take an eye patch and stick it to the upper eyelid to weigh it down, preventing the eyes from flickering without blocking your access to the natural lashes with your isolation tweezers!
This is a really comfortable way to keep your client’s eyes closed for you and for them as the eye patches don’t take up too much space and they have the added benefit of being soft and having that lovely cooling gel on their underside. For clients who are allergic to hydrogel eye patches, or if you’re looking to save a little money, you can do this with foam tape instead of under eye patches – just cut to size and stick it down, but be gentle when removing it at the end as it’s quite a bit stickier than under eye patches.
There you have it – 5 ways to make lashing easier for you, without actually cutting corners or forsaking the quality of your work. Early on in your lash career, it’s so important to really ensure you are perfecting your skills, so be wary of any hack that is just designed to make a set faster without adding any real value. While the tips above will speed things up or make things easier for you, the value in each of them is that it actually means you’ll be providing an even better experience for your client, as well as making your job that little bit easier!
