During the summer of 2024 I had semi-permanent brow makeup done for the first time and today I’m going to detail and review the whole process. The brow technique I went for is called “combo brows” where they use “microblading” at the front, to draw thin, life like hairs, then “shading” from the middle to the tail to create a soft look that doesn’t look like individual hairs but isn’t a block of colour.

Summary of semi-permanent brow makeup by Penelope Gomes

✅ Pros

Painless
Brows look very natural
Shape is much nicer than anything I could draw on myself
It has evened out my brows
Don’t need to fill my brows in every day
Increased confidence

😐 Cons

The “after” videos are a little misleading- it looks AMAZING the moment it’s done but does not stay looking quite that perfect after the first day
Price may be prohibitive to some (€339 which included a discount + a healing cream)
It’s not quite perfect, colour fades a little unevenly
After a year I see it fading already, colour is very grey and patches are emerging and €339 per year is a lot.

Earlier this year I started getting hammered with ads on Instagram from a salon in Malta called Penelope Gomes, showcasing various procedures but mostly focusing on “combo brows”. I’ve been considering brow tattoos, or “semi-permanent makeup” for a few years. My brows are much blonder than my hair and very sparse, so I fill them in every day with powder or pencil and a gel to set. I don’t wear much (if any) other makeup most days, so long as my brows are filled, I feel like my face looks like a face.

But I’d love to not have to do the brows each day and also have more even and nicer shaped brows. I’ve never been skilled at getting a really nice shape so whilst I wasn’t incredibly unhappy with my brows, it was something that had been playing on my mind. And, well, their advertising worked, as the posted results looked amazing. Incredibly natural, none of them looked tattooed at all. The colours were subtle and the effect was hair like without looking drawn on.

So in May I had my free consult, in June I had the first session, in August I had the topup and now they are fully healed and I’ve had some time to see how they perform and I’m going to walk you through the whole process.

Price of combo brows in Malta

At the time, Penelope Gomes was offering €75 off semi-permanent makeup, so mine came in a little cheaper. The total cost for the semi-permanent combo brows was:

€350 for the first application (here I received €75 off due to an offer, so I paid €275)
€39 for the aftercare cream (insane price, you can find much cheaper products)
€25 for the followup session

Total of : €339

Process to get semi-permanent brows

First consultation

This session took about 10 minutes. I wish I had taken more notes, so I’d recommend not feeling rushed and taking time to make notes and take a photo. In this session they will lay you down and map out the perfect shape using string that makes little marks on your face to map out where they would make the shape. It only takes a minute, they map it out, then draw on one eyebrow for you to show you how it can look. I was happy with the shape but I’m sure you can ask them to adjust or try something different. In this session we didn’t talk about colour and they only do one brow- it’d be nice if they did both so you could also wear them for the day to enjoy them a bit more.

What I didn’t love was the admin around this session, which seemed pointless. A few days before I received a bunch of emails asking for a photo of my bare brows so they could look at them before and already begin mapping the shape, but it was clear during the session that no one had looked at the photos so just seemed like a waste of time.

I also found the reception set up confusing- they share a reception with another company and there is no indication of which desk you need to go to. Plus the counter is so high you cannot even see the people sitting behind them! When I got in, there was no one around and when a few people did appear they were with their faces down and just rushing. No one acknowledged me for a while. Periodically therapists came out and called their clients names so I assumed that would happen. Eventually someone sat at reception and I gave my name but they informed me they worked for the other salon. Finally I got to give my name to the right person but I heard the therapist shouting something that seemed to indicate she thought I was late and I’d have to rebook but truth was I got there 20 mins early but the whole set up was unclear.

Future appointments were fine though.

Here you can see how they looked immediately after the first session (top) and below that, how dark they became a few days later during the healing process.

combo bro tattoos — Top: Immediately after tattooing.
Bottom: darkening during the first week healing.

Tattooing of semi-permanent brows

No botox 4 weeks before
No gym for 24 hours after
No direct sunlight for 2 weeks
No botox, facials or peels for 4 weeks after

You’re advised to get to the appointment 15 mins early so they can apply some numbing cream. When you’re called in they will lay you down and map out the brows again and you get a chance to talk about colour. They mix their own so if you want it a little lighter or darker, more red, less red etc they can do it for you to get the colour that best fits your complexion.

The whole process takes about an hour and a half and there are a few different steps of applying product and tattooing and with the combo brows there are different types of tattooing. You have the microblading which they generally use at the front of the brow to draw on individual hairstrokes, then they use the shader for a soft shading effect from the middle out. The process is almost painless, in a few places I could feel it a little but it was nothing more than a light scratch.

Healing process

They give you a lot of info around the healing process, I recommend taking a photo of the infographic they have on the reception desk and taking notes when they explain as I forgot everything the second I left. But basically, it takes around 4-6 weeks to heal, once that time has passed you’ll see if you need a top-up.

First day- amazing

Immediately when they are done they look AMAZING. So perfect. But already by that evening they start to look really dark and blocky.

First week- dark and scabby

Mine stayed super dark for about a week, so definitely don’t do this just before any event where you want to look normal. After a week they faded a little and peeled slightly. They didn’t scab up as such or become super patchy but when washing my face I noticed little flecks of brown ink coming out.

Second week - healed

After the two week mark for me they had basically healed. They didn’t disappear then reappear as they warn they might. After two weeks they had definitely faded a bit with some gaps and then those gaps never re-appeared.

Healed state and topup

I left it 6 weeks then booked the top-up. For me the micro-bladed bits were totally gone, I had a few small gaps in the shading and the colour was a little grey. Unfortunately the next available appointment wasn’t for another 5 weeks, so 11 weeks total since I first got them- just a warning, if you want them done for a specific event to either book the followup immediately after getting them done, or else allow 4 months total for both sessions + healing.

Here you can see how they had faded during the healing process (approx 11 weeks, top) and how they looked immediately after the second topup.

bombo brows malta — Top: right before the topup session, some significant fading
Bottom: immediately after the topup session

Brow followup top-up

Again, arrive 15 mins early so you can get the numbing cream, then they’ll assess what needs filling in and if the colour needs adjusting or correcting. This took around 30 minutes total I believe, so much faster than the first session, but the healing time is the same, so now you have another 4 weeks of super dark brows, scabbing/peeling brows and then hopefully the perfect finished product.

I found that once this had healed I had two bits I was still not happy with. On one eyebrow I still had a gap where the colour had totally faded and on the other eyebrow I had a bit of a ‘blob’ of colour where it shouldn’t be. Honestly, I think only I would notice the blob, but it is a shame and it still hasn’t faded now in December. I did go for a 3rd (free) topup on the gap though and this was solved within probably around 20 minutes.

Overall thoughts on Penelope Gomes combo brow tattoo

Overall, I like it. It’s a hundred times better than my natural brows and I wake up in the morning and feel like my face is basically ‘ready’. I can just wash and moisturise and wear no makeup at all and still feel done. It has definitely helped to even out my brows, they look natural and mostly people are surprised when I tell them it’s a tattoo as it looks natural ‘but better’.

But already by December, I would say the colour has faded more than I’d have hoped and whilst I specifically didn’t want any red, I wanted a very cool colour, it is quite grey and flat, as opposed to looking more ‘cool brown’ immediately after being done. Now in March 2025 they are much more grey, and starting to visibly fade, but I don’t think they need redoing yet, the shape is still clear. Many people have told me that they had no idea they were tattooed, which is great and I love waking up and having already “done” brows.

I will say though, the best they ever look is immediately after they’re tattooed- like you see in the ‘after’ videos. They never look quite that perfect again but overall I’m really happy. I will definitely get them done again, I just might try a different salon next time to see how the results compare.

Semi-permanent brow makeup at Penelope Gomes

Summary of semi-permanent brow makeup by Penelope Gomes

Price of combo brows in Malta