You know those days when you're face is just meh and whatever you do to it, it still looks all tired and pale and shape-less? Yeh, well I get that sometimes and I absolutely hate it, because people ask me if I'm tired/hangover/ill and really, it's just a bad face-day. What I found that helps a lot is contouring. It took a lot of courage for me to venture into contouring at first, since I've seen too many poor attempts on others and it just scared the hell out of me (who wants to have a big orange patch instead of face?!). Even good ol' trusty Jemma Kidd in her book says it takes some time to learn how to contour properly, but I decided to give it a go and soon realized it really does help my face look more put-together and it isn't that hard after all. I'm not a pro, but this is how I do it & can't say I'm unhappy with the results. Lately I've been using MUA Bronzed Perfection* for it and I think it's safe to say, it's one to use when you're a bit of a scaredy-cat like me!
There are loads of products that can help you with contouring of your face, you can use bronzing powders, bronzing gels, bronzing creams, contouring powders or simply just a shade darker face powder or foundation when it comes to it. What contouring does, it basically sculpts your face using depths of your face structure. You can see in the picture below that my face is rather roundish, with quite a high forehead, rounder cheeks and a wider nose (now I sound slightly deformed, but hey you get the gist, haha!). When my face is at it's 'flattest' (with no contouring whatsoever), you can see all the features clearly.
Now to slightly adjust them, and make my face more I-had-enough-sleep looking (above you can see a but of natural shade on my face, below you can see absolutely flat face with light shining straight at it!), I use powder bronzer with an angled brush (Sigma angled contouring brush). Below you can see where I like to contour my face!
Step 1 is, I think, the best known contouring step - pout a bit creating 'hollows' in your cheeks and swipe the brush from your temple in a curve-like manner towards your mouth. Don't go crazy with amount and rather focus on blending. I figured out that I need to be careful with the bit closest to my ear, as I sometimes don't blend it enough and it goes patchy, yuck! So always, but always look from the side angle (I used to ask the bf during my first attempts before I found the right amount of bronzer). This step slightly 'slims' your face and makes it look less flat. Step 2 is for us big foreheads. Adding a bit of bronzer on the hair line and blending it helps optically 'lower' your forehead. Step 3 is a bit of a dangerous one - my nose is naturally a bit wide at the top and adding bronzer on sides helps slimming it. However, you have to be so so so careful, because adding too much makes you look like you got punched in the middle of your face, ha! You can see the difference between picture 2 & 4, my nose looks much slimmer in picture 4! Step 4 - add a little bit of bronzer above your brows, it helps slimming your face and when you add a bit of highlighter on your brow bones afterwards, it creates a nice contrast and makes you brows and eyes stand out more. Step 5 is up to you, I don't tend to do this one very often, but if you feel like your neck & chin could do with a little bit of definition, just swipe the brush right under your jaw line. Be careful though if you're wearing white top as it could transfer! Finally, blend everything!!! This is where people sometimes finish contouring, but it's really the most important step - make sure that all sharp lines are blended neatly and there are no patches whatsoever. Tadaaaa - you're left with a slightly sculpted & more fresh-looking face!
MUA Bronzed Perfection is one of the recently launched products by Make-Up Academy. It's not your regular bronzer though - it's a jumbo bronzer! It contains whole 15 grams of product, which is gonna last for ages! What I really appreciate is the matte texture (no crazy glitter or shimmer) and the buildable colour - I believe this could be suitable even for the palest complexions! Also, the staying power is amazing, I had no problem having it on the top of my BB cream for majority of my day.
You can get this bronzer in selected Superdrugs or online in MUA store and it costs only £3! Can't go wrong for that price, and I think it's absolutely ace for those who are a bit scared of contouring because the colour is really light at one sweep and it's much easier to add a bit of colour where you need afterwards rather than work with already a heavy pay-off and then blending till your hand hurts!
What about your and contouring?
Have you got any secret tips?