I have three different makeup pencil sharpeners from various brands but none of them seem to work!

The tip of my eyebrow pencil breaks off inside the sharpener and I end up sharpening it about five times before it works, by which time I've lost alot of pencil and the tip is never sharp.

This happens on my eyeliners too.

The pencil I am trying to sharpen today is No7 Beautiful brows pencil. It's so frustrating, what am I doing wrong?

I'm sick of this happening to mine too! They say you should put them in the freezer for an hour and then sharpen them. I have tried this, but with mixed results, and the dearer pencils don't sharpen any better than cheaper varieties.

I have a Boots own make one and it works for me.

Get a proper & decent eyebrow/liner pencil sharpener...been there, done that etc

Do you own one/have any reccommenations? I have an avon one, a boots 17 one and a mabelline (sp) one and none work.

I did pinch one of my daughters stationary ones once as she's too young to have them and it worked perfectly but I lost it I've tried stealing others since but I get the same problem.

I've just put my pencil in the fridge to see how that goes but I've easily managed to take a 3 inch pencil down to an inch befre now

I`m sorry but I can`t - I`m going back to the early 80s now when I had this trouble...a semi expensive one cured that problem though, I remember it all quite clearly....

look out for a "gap" at the end of the blade where the point goes right in...that`s a vital thing...

it stops the actual tip from getting stuck to the blade as you rotate it.

Thank you, that gap does make sense, I shall see what I can find

I was hoping you understood what I was going on about !

and I really didn`t expect to be talking about eyeliner sharpeners today, almost 27 years on.

Dont over sharpen them. I just give mine a couple of turns every few days instead. I use any old cheapo ones, the cheaper the better, Sephora, Borjois (sp) all work for me with any eye pencils. I have a 20 quid eye liner as well as el cheapo.

Best one I use is by e.l.f (eyes lips face) and costs £1.50 has two different sized pencil holes so depending on what sort you are sharpening you have a choice, never failed me yet! if you go on facebook and join their page you always get free offers.

I bought a Borgois one, and it has a large hole and a small hole.

To be honest, i thought it was the quality of the eye pencil, not the sharpener that was the problem. The reason being, this always happened to me too until i bought an expensive brand eye pencil, and it hasnt happened since.

Ok, I have an update, obviously I'm going to buy another sharpener but in the mean time I tried it out of the fridge and all was going well until I pulled out the pencil and there was my nice sharp lead, stuck in the sharpener .

So, I wondered if the lead was too brittle. It's a No.7 eyebrow pencil and has a thin plastic coating around the lead (between the lead and the wood). So I decided I had nothing to lose as by the end of the day I'll be left with no pencil and a pile of shavings anyway. I decided to try the opposite and dipped it into some boiling water. Everytime I had sharpened down to dry wood I redipped and it worked!

Not something I want to do regularly but not a method I expected to succeed either!

I find if I drop my pencils (on laminate floor) they will never sharpen again as the middle has shattered or weakened considerably.

What I did do once though was put a dropped pencil on top of the radiator for 15 minutes to re-mould it, then half an hour in the fridge. Sharpened fine! Im not condoning everyone starts melting thier pencils, just that for me, then, it worked.

Seeing an old post about not being able to sharpen eyebrow pencils, one thing I notice now is that they are not made out of wood that you COULD sharpen. They are made out of a synthetic material which means that you can't sharpen them at all, full stop.
Same goes for lipliners.

I find that these new ones you can only use half a dozen times if that, before they are too worn down and of course you can't sharpen the bloody things ! This must be a new ploy to make people part with their money, knowing full well that you blink once and they are worn out.

Manufacturers take note. From Mrs Angry of Eastbourne

I'll echo this as a 56 yr old and have tried many varieties of pencils, sharpeners etc!

Don't use a pencil sharpener, use a small craft knife.