Discovery.

In this stage, you experiment with how close to the nose you should apply the F-tape, because tiny placement changes can seriously change the result. If the F-tape sits a little too far from the nose or a little too close, the crease can behave completely differently. You also experiment with the angle of the F-tape by adjusting where the “head” and the “tail” land on your eyelid. If you have a higher nose bridge (which is common with Occidental eyelids), it can sometimes help to apply the F-tape closer to the nose or to angle it slightly upward. You can also use scissors to shape the F-tape so it matches your ideal eyelid crease more accurately and feels more “made for you.”

On Megan’s first day, her ideal crease lasted eight hours, and it even survived a hot yoga session. On rare days, her ideal crease lasted around ten hours, which felt like a huge win. However, throughout most of this stage, her crease still failed quickly, and at the time she honestly did not know why.

There were several reasons her crease tended to fail early in this stage, and most of them were totally normal for the beginning. During this period, Megan was still learning the small details of her eyelid skin and how it reacted from day to day. Her F-tape setup was also still evolving, because she was gradually figuring out what shape and placement fit her best. At the same time, eyelid crease exercises were only starting to become part of her daily routine, so her crease was still young and not fully stable yet. Because of that, real-life situations like hot yoga, squinting, and looking down at her phone in the morning could easily weaken the crease and make it collapse.

One of the biggest lessons she learned was that her eye direction mattered more than she expected. When she kept her visual gaze above eye level, her eyelids opened more fully, and her crease had a better chance of staying folded. On the other hand, when she spent a lot of time looking down, her crease was more likely to drop. That is why she had to be cautious with things that kept her gaze below eye level, such as long phone or computer use, sweeping the floor, or reading with a book on her lap.