There's a reason contouring is currently so popular, and although it is debatably largely due to the Kardashians, it is also huge amongst YouTubers and beauty gurus. The reason we love contouring is because it's easier to use makeup to slim our face rather than exercise 7 days a week and eat like a supermodel. I don't know about you but I love anything with carbs. Potatoes and the many ways they can be cooked are one of my favourite foods... and I'll be the first to admit my face (without any makeup at all) slightly resembles a potato in its natural form.
If you do a Google video search for "contour tutorial" you'll be greeted with about 4,160,000 results, so I probably don't need to provide you with a step by step tutorial (I'll let the pro's handle that).
What I can give you is my favourite contour kits, brushes and maybe a tip or two.
Contour shades top to bottom: Too Faced Cocoa Contour, Kat Von D Shade & Light, Marc Jacobs 40 Mirage Filter
My preference is to use powder contour. I do own the Anastasia Beverly Hills Cream Contour Kit but I found it was more hassle than it was worth. Although it was fairly easy to blend out with a beauty blender, the product itself was dry and required me to add a drop of facial oil to it before it was actually useable.
My favourite contour powder is the Kat Von D shade 'subconscious' from the palette, followed by the Marc Jacobs contour shade and Too Faced 'medium cocoa'.
For brushes I don't own too many but my favourite is the Zoeva 109 Luxe Face Paint brush followed by my Nars Kabuki Ita (which although is great, I don't find myself reaching for it that often) and my Real Techniques Bold Metals 301 Flat Contour brush (which I've only gotten recently - its beautifully soft and its much denser than my other contouring brushes so I'm still working it out!). I own the Bella brushes 24 set and the xoBeauty 12 piece set but neither of these sets contain any brushes that I love for contouring.
Lastly, some tips that you've probably heard before but that are important:
- Find your cheekbone and apply your contour shade directly under it, running a line straight along from your ear to no further in than your pupil (although I prefer to end my contour in line with the outside corner of my eye - but it obviously changes depending on your face shape). If you get to your mouth, you're generally going to have made your face look round again.
- BLEND upwards and until your arm hurts. Don't blend down as this just defeats the purpose. I recently had my makeup done by a makeup artist. I don't want to makeup shame anyone but this picture is the reason we blend.
Please ignore my pimples that she's also accentuated. My boyfriend took this photo to show me and let me know that I should have done my makeup myself.
- Start light and blend and build up if you need to. You're not doing yourself any favours by going in heavy with too much product!
PS: If you love chocolate, just go in store and find the Too Faced Cocoa Contour palette to sniff.... whilst writing this blog I sat there and enjoyed mine!
