Overplucking your eyebrows is like a rite of passage. Better than that, it's something you need to do at least once to know never to do it again. At least, that's the theory, but in practice sometimes it's just too darned tempting.

I've been tinkering with my brows for a good deal more than 10 years, so you would have thought I'd have the hang of things by now. Yet the other day I saw a photograph of myself taken a year ago. "Where are my eyebrows?" I shrieked, to nobody in particular. Despite the fact that I now put my brows in the hands of professionals, I can't help but have the occasional tweeze myself. And this is where the problem lies. I think I'm tidying them up between visits, whereas in reality, as demonstrated by the picture, I'm just ensuring that they are in a state. I wouldn't assume that I can cut my own hair, so goodness knows why I think I'm a dab hand with a pair of tweezers.

Of course, the trick with overplucking is not to go overboard when it comes to filling them back in. Nothing draws attention to overplucked eyebrows like a badly drawn line where the brow should be. "Grow your brows back asap - the more you pluck, the less likely they are to grow back," says eyebrow expert Shavata Singh (whose tweezers - £12, 020-8997 1089 for stockists - are easily the best I've used). "It is a bitter pill to swallow, but it is the only way."

Letting brows grow back, then going to a professional to have them reshaped, is the obvious answer, but it doesn't offer an instant solution. To draw brows in, "start from the centre", says Singh, "filling up to the arch, then down the eyebrow. Do not use hard lines and build up the colour gradually - less is more."

And stay away from black, unless that is your hair colour or you want to scare small children. I would also recommend ditching your eyebrow pencil in favour of a brow powder, such as Clinique's, which should stop you ending up with that dreaded thick black line.