Ready to take your contour makeup to the next level? Everyone is contouring these days, so stand out from the crowd by taking your contour makeup from average to on FLEEK with these 3 simple tips!!
1. Select Your Shade!
First off, you’ll need the perfect shade of contour makeup. You want to go just a few shades lighter than your foundation for a natural shadow look. Take your skin tone into consideration: are you naturally warm toned? Do you have a pink or peach undertone? Olive? Your natural skin tone will be an important factor when it comes to deciding on a contour makeup shade. If you are fair skinned, it is really easy to look orange when you apply a contour shade or bronzer, so be on the lookout for cool toned contour makeup colors! If you have a warmer undertone, you don’t have to worry about looking orange as much, but you still want to try to find a shade that will look very natural on you, because our goal is to fake shadows, not smear random dark splotches of color on our faces!
Once you’ve found the right tone for your complexion, it’s time to examine the different textures of contour makeup!
For contouring purposes, I would suggest going with a nice matte texture, regardless of the formula you choose. If you use a shimmery bronzer, your makeup will be more noticeable, and it will look less like a natural shadow. For a professionally contoured look, go with a shimmer-free, matte finish product that will blend undetectably into your skin!
2. Select Your Features!
Which features do you want to pop out, and which do you wish to diminish?? For me, I prefer to have have a taller nose bridge, narrower cheeks, a narrower forehead, and a more defined jawline. You may wish to diminish forehead size, diminish nose size, diminish chin size, or any combination and beyond! This is where you have to use your own face as your guide. If you like all of your features just the size they are, you can still use contour makeup to simply draw the focus to your features by contouring around them so that they really pop!
Once you’ve selected the feature you wish to bring out, you can go about making them really draw the eye by diminishing the rest of your face. Shading will make features less prominent, while highlighting will bring attention right where you want it.
3. Select Your Tools!
Now that you have your contour makeup product, and you know which features you wish to diminish or draw focus away from, the last step will be to simply select the tool you will use to apply the contour makeup to your face. Here your best options:
- The basic fluffy contour brush:
This brush will allow you to load up your cream or powder contour makeup and apply it to the face with a natural texture and excellent blendability.
- The small, flat contour brush:
This utensil is best for applying cream formulas, such as a cream contour or darker foundation pallet. The benefit of using this smaller, flat tool is that you have have a bit more precision when applying your contour, and you can create more of an angular look. You can also get to smaller areas more easily, and you can draw thinner lines such as the lines you will need along your nosebridge if you want to slim your nose.
- The Beauty Blender:
This is a magical tool that works best for contour makeup when paired with another tool, like the small, flat brush! Once your contour is on your face, create a flawless blend by smoothing it out with your Beauty Blender. This tool blends the colors perfectly, and creates a gorgeous, skin like texture for your naturally beautiful look!
Now you have everything you need to create your own, personalized contour makeup routine. Take these 3 tips and run with them! Be your own beauty stylist, and don’t be afraid to play with different textures, utensils, and colors. Experiment until you’re happy with your contoured face!
Have fun playing up your features, beauties!