The Art of Contour
I know sounds a bit daunting, but there is no need to struggle any longer with contouring your face here are a few steps on how to easily achieve it, now before you say I want to look like Kim Kardashian, i'm afraid you never will, even if you copy the way she contours her face, the only peron that can legitimately look like Kim is Kim, you should want to look like you, a more structured version of you that is remeber you are creating something that suits YOUR face shape! :).
Now lets get started:
Step 1: Apply foundation and concealer to your face, how you normally would, you can't get that fashion look without the perfect base.
Step 2: Now its time to contour, this means shading and highlighting your face in order to push certain things back (shading) and make others more prominent (highlighting), sounds hard but trust me with some simple instructions and a bit of practice you'll be a natural, and look it to ;). Now personally I like to shade my face first, to do this you find the natural shadow in your face, this can be found below the cheek bones, along the jaw line, either side of the nose, temples, right underneath the bottom lip and on the forehead. Now just to keep things simple I will stick to the cheekbones, jaw line, temples, lips and nose. Right so for the cheekbones choose what you are going to use as a shader, this can either be a cream contour (looks more natural and dewy, like your actual skin) or a powder contour (looks very matte however is easier to use and can be blended easily), now make sure it has a brown tinge, 1-3 shades darker than your natural colour and is Matte, this means you put down the shimmery orange bronzer! using this as a shader is not a good look, unless you're going for the shiny umpa lumpa look. Now to find the place where to put your shader, place your hand on your cheek bone (the riased hard part of your cheek) and trace it back to where it meets your ear/hairline. Now this is not where you're going to place the shader, next slide your hand down until you find a dip/hollow (aka the hollow of your cheeks- this should be roughly 1cm under your cheek bone ( if you are having trouble finding it suckng your cheeks in also helps) this is where you place your shader.
Step 3: Now to apply the shader,(using cream contour you can use your fingers and blend it in with them or you can use a contour brush for both) starting off at the hairline follow this hollow along stopping roughly in line with the outer corners of you eye, then blend away, you can make this shader as light or dark as you want depending on personal preference etc, just please make sure that you blend it enough so that there isn't a visible hard line!
Step 4: If you have a wide forehead you can apply shader to the temple area, to find where you should place it feel your face again, and apply it to the hollows in a rough tapered triangle shape. (Only do this if you have a broad forehead, it will make the area look smaller, if you have a naturally small forehead it will diminish it in size even more!)
You can also apply it along and slightly uderneath the jawline, making those people with a less pronouced jaw a bit more angular.
Feel like your nose is too big or the wrong shape (i'm sure its not!) Apply a little shader to the sides of your nose (remeber to blend well) this can make a nose look thinner as well as straighter! Finally underneath your bottom lip (this requires feeling your face again) directly underneath where your lip ends (where the lips curves outwards from the chin) you will feel a dip, this is an area of natural shadow apply a tiny amount of shader here to create a fuller lip. There we go, that wasn't to hard (at least I hope it wasn't). Now for highlighting: for this again you can use a cream/liquid or a powder just make sure you use the same type as you did with the contour ie cream and cream or powder on powder. For highlighting you can use a shimmer if you want (it will make you shimmer in the sun) or just a plain matte one, both with highlight the prominent features of your face, now highlighting is much easier I find than contouring, mainly because it is a lighter colour so its no massive problem if you make a slight mistake! For this you should apply to the bridge of the nose and extend up slightly to the middle of the forehead, brow bone and cupids bow, (just note that if you are using a shimmer, don't use too much...or you may shine like a beacon :P ).
Want to know who does good contouring products? No problem:
Charles fox- Dermacolour concealer palette dark (cream) (£25) gives you a wide choice of colours
Other stories contour cream (£10)
MAC scultpting powder (£16.50)
Sleek makeup face contour kit (£6.49)
MAC strobe cream (highlight) (£10 selfridges or £24.50 Mac cosmetics)
Seventeen Wow 3 way highlighter (£5.99)
Revlon skin lights face illuminator (£11.99)
NYX mosaic powder highlight ($6.75)
Nars cosmetics highlighting blush (£21.50)
Bourjois bronzing powder and highlighting kit (£6.00)
Mac translucent loose powder (£20.50)
Hope this helps! x