Hi everyone,

Well, I've been talking a lot about contouring since I think about the end of October last year, and I showed a little in the Halloween looks, but never an everyday contouring tutorial.

Now, it's very difficult to show you guys on a face, because if you contour properly, you can't actually see it. You blend it soo well, that your face shape looks different, but it isn't. To show you guys the best way of doing your contouring, I drew a model on which I show you where you should put your highlight and your contouring colour. Also, you can use several different contouring tricks I'm talking about here to personalise it for your face.

For a highlight you can choose a light face powder, YSL Touche Eclat or an official highlighting powder, whatever you like. Professional makeup artists use a lighter foundation for highlighting. A highlighter can have a shimmer, a contouring powder (or stick or whatever you prefer). A contouring product is supposed to be matte, you're creating a shadow on your face, shadows don't shimmer or sparkle. Tip: most bronzers have a golden shimmer, so check really well before using a bronzer as a contouring colour. Professionals use a darker foundation for this, they add shimmer over this later on.

Here is another tip: Professionals contour whilst placing foundation, basically they start to contour with the foundation. We "mere mortals" contour over the foundation with a powder, a stick or whatever you prefer to use.

Slim down your face
The face under this text had contouring for people who have a round face but who do have naturally well defined cheekbones. Basically you create shadows on both sides of the face to make it seem more slim. Also you contour on and under your jawline to kill anything that hints to a double chin. The highlight on the nose and just above the apples of your cheeks pull the attention.

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Slim down your face and add whatever you need to it

If you look at the face under this text, you see it's almost the same, I just added some defining under the cheekbones to make them stand out a little more, also the highlight is less, this is a face you can build on, if you want a slimmer nose, you can add that, if you think you eyes are to wide, you contour them to seem closer together. When you're done with your perfect face, then you highlight where you want the eyes to go, or you feel you need something to pull a feature out some more.

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Contouring for a naturally heart shaped face

If you have a heart shaped face your forehead is somewhat wider and you have a more pointy chin. To counteract this, you create shadows on your forehead, making it seem smaller and on your chin making it a little shorter and thereby wider.
Also you add some highlighting on the sides of your jaw. If you have an undefined jawline, you can contour under this, but be careful not to blend too high with the contouring.

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Shorten chin and/or forehead

If you feel like you have a high forehead, you can make it look lower if you add some contouring to the edge of your hairline, pulling it down so to speak. If you have a long chin, you can give the illusion of it being shorter by adding some contouring to the tip of the chin.
If you do both, you create a shorter face. As with all the contouring, blend well!!

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Higher (more defined) cheekbones

If you're craving more defined cheekbones, or you wish they're higher, try this trick of darkening under the cheekbones (you can feel the bones under your skin) and highlighting on top of them. If you want you can add blush on the apples, but make sure you're not adding blush to the shadow part of the contouring because that would look very weird.

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Slim down your nose

If you think your nose is too wide, here is how you slim it down: you add a highlight to the top and shadows to the sides. Sounds simple, and it actually is, just blend well, because you see every unblended line on a nose.

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Shorten your nose

If you feel like your nose is too long, you add some shadow to the tip.

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Wider set eyes

People forget that you can contour your eyes as well, usually this is done with eyeshadow, but on days you want to look natural, you can still cheat a little. If you want more bright eyes, use an eye brightener (I personally love Smashbox's Photo Op, under eye brightener, which I use all over my eyes).
If you want more wide set eyes, try to add some matte slightly darker then your natural skin tone eyeshadow in your outer corners and work it into and a little above the crease. You can also use your contouring powder for this.

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Make your eyes seem closer together

There are women who have very wide-set eyes, and who would love for them to be closer together. The best way to accomplish this is by adding a contour on the inside of the eyes and when you line your eyes to make sure you line the inner corner (with a waterproof eyeliner).

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Higher brows

With the illusion of higher brows, you create more open eyes and thereby a friendlier face. If you're lucky you have this naturally, if you're not, plucking your eyebrows can help a lot! Also highlighting under the brows adds a lightness to the eyes as well.

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Rounder mouth

I have a friend who calls herself a wide mouth frog, she thinks her lips are thin and her mouth is too wide, with this trick I made her day, so here it is. You add some shiny highlighter to your Cupid's bow and a MATTE highlighter on the out-most corners (I actually used a light concealer on her outer corners). Now if you line and fill in your lips, they look a lot less wide and more full.

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More youth-full face

This was news to me when I first read it on the Touche Eclat manual (yes, I read those papers that come with my products), but if you add touche eclat to the places where you get those non-youth-full lines you look younger.
This means you place it on frown lines and the lines that run from your nose to the corners of your mouth.
I always tend to add it to the balls of my eyelid and under my brow and on the top of my nose as well when I use this. I know why you're supposed to place in on the wrinkles (to take the shadow out of it), but most products then seep into the wrinkles making them look even worse, but the touche eclat actually stays put on me, so it does work. Try this at home with the product you prefer, if it does seep into the wrinkle, then find a touche eclat tester and test it, if it doesn't budge on you and you like the way it looks..... buy it ;)




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I hope you guys liked this post!! Try it on your face, blend well and after a while you'll probably add a darker colour contouring product to your morning routine (like I did). The first time I was using a very little contouring, now I use a colour that is much darker, but works much better, it's all in the blending.

Big hug!!