Cee Me

How to contour your face.

CCee — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:52:54 -0800

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!!

Challenge 14 Gwen Stefani - Video look "Hollaback Girl" Tutorial

CCee — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:23:41 -0800

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance, that I could make those people dance and, maybe, they’d be happy for a while..............

(I know it's not a Gwen song, but I thought about it when I saw how long this Challenge has been unanswered.)
I'm sooo sorry,
I've posted about why it's been so long, and I'll stop talking about it from now on and tell you all about this very easy look.

The example pictures are a bit blurry so I found another picture to show me how Gwen had her makeup during those times and found that it's basically the same. The Hollaback Girl eyes are very simple eyes with eyeliner and mascara and RED lips. I'm actually thinking of buying some new lipsticks soon and I'll talk about that when I do buy them (which I probably will ;) ) but again back to this look. The pictures I mixed together are and .

As you can see in the video she has no defined crease or eye shape. I did do a little of this because I didn't want the eye to look flat. Also she has more almond shaped eyes then me, so don't hold that against me.

Here is my final eye:

You can see I'm still trying to grow my eyebrows a little thicker, and there's a little patch where there are baby-hairs already and the rest just needs to grow in (sooo hard not to pluck!!).

Face

I didn't take pictures of the foundation etc. because you guys have seen me do this sooo often, by now I think you know how it looks.

I started with a clean and moisturised face before placing my foundation base (Smashbox Hybrid 2 in 1 Luminizing Primer, the softest thing EVER, and something I cannot live without) and eyeshadow base (Smashbox Lip & Lid Primer Natural, honestly the Urban Decay Primer Potion is better but with no vibrant colours this was the choice for today).

It's been winter for a while so I'm getting an even lighter skin tone then in the summer, and the foundation I use that matches the colour most at this time is Too Faced Magic Wand Illuminating Foundation in New York Light 2. This is such an amazing packaging, honestly the packaging is the reason I bought it, it's soo easy to bring with you for touch ups and when you don't sleep at home and you do need a foundation that you can sneak with. The foundation comes from the brush and I use two pumps for a whole face. The thing I was very happy with was the fact that the foundation is actually great, it's very light and blends well. I sometimes use it in the summer as well simply because it's such a great formula, only then I have to darken it with some bronzer to not make me look pale.

I used concealer (Smashbox, Camera Ready Concealer in 3.0) under my eyes placing it with my fingers because my brush had just been cleaned and was still wet. For this kind of placement I usually use a brush because it makes it look more polishes because the placement is more precise, but this works too, so a concealer brush is a luxury brush unless you're a professional or a perfectionist like me.

The next step is some extra under eye brightening with Smashbox Photo Op. This is one of those things I use on days when I don't wear any makeup and still want to have that "I've had a GREAT night's sleep" look.

All of these steps were set with Make Up For Ever High Definition Powder and a Baby Buki Brush (Smashbox), I usually do this with the Sephora 45 Mineral Powder brush because it's softer but this was also a brush I cleaned (I did some heavy contouring yesterday and it was sooo dark that I wanted it clean before using it for the HD powder again). The powder is a miracle if you ask me, I LOVE this stuff, it seriously kills all shine and pores.

This is my eye at this point:

On the picture of Gwen (not the screenshot) she's wearing a little contouring under her cheekbone (high up on the cheek) but kept the colour very much on "the back" of her face.

Eyes

As the eye colour I chose a colour that's amazing on my skin tone, if you're pale like me and you need a skin toned matte eyeshadow try and get your hands on this:

This is a Smashbox Eyeshadow called Vanilla and it blends great and looks amazing! I placed it with the Sephora All Over Shadow brush (no. 21) on my eyes and I even put a little under my eyes to make the skin look more one colour.

The Holiday Season 2008 brought the Rapture Collection to Smashbox. In this collection was a get-gorgeous set of 8 luminous shadow duos and two brushes which I got. In this set are some ah-may-zingggg colours and the brushes are the two I go to most. In this picture you see the Eye Shadow Duo called Twilight (talking of Twilight, anyone seen the movie yet? Is it any good??): As you can see this duo has a blue and a white-ish colour. The blue I've used on the eyes in the Bedroom Eyes Tutorial and the white is the colour I'm using today as a very subtle highlight to add a little depth to an otherwise flat eye. I would grab one of my 2 no. 15 definer brushes for this, if I didn't just (you've guessed it) cleaned it. I use the normal red handled one for cream eyeliners and the pink one (that came with the Rapture set) for eye shadows. But today I grabbed my old favourite (it's still one I LOVE, it's a bit softer so the colour placement is different, also the hairs are a little shorter which makes it a real dome brush) the Sephora Professionnel Platinum dome shadow brush no. 13). I placed some of the colour (blending very well) under the arch of my eyebrows, on the inner corners of my eyes and in the middle of my eyelid. All the places you place a highlight will seem to be sticking out more, to if you have more round eyes then me, skip the last step, if you have very high eyebrows, skip the brow highlight. The white on the inner corners makes you look more awake and fresh. At this point my eye looks like this:

Okay, here comes the part that's the hardest, getting both eye lines to look the same. I usually draw the start of the eye line as usual and then do the other eye. Then I take a step back and look in the mirror from a little distance and put an inimini dot at the end points (now this point is easier to take off and re-place then a complete line). When I'm happy with that I draw the outline very thinly on both eyes and check again if they're equal. Here's how that looks: If I'm happy I fill it up, remember to not use a just dipped in liner for the point because then you'll kill the point. The eyeliner I used here was Liner Clubbing by Bourjois in 81 Absolute Black. This liner has a very very thin brush, which makes for a very very thin line (as you can see at the not filled line picture) which I tend to build up slowly into a line the thickness I want.

Four more steps to go now. I whitened my waterlines with Bourjois Noir & Blanc Eyeliner using the Blanc (Eyeliner for inside rim), I also used a little little bit of the black on the inner corners. I didn't want it to be black, but just to define it a little, so I didn't move the pencil on my skin, I pressed it like a stamp and then took it off my skin and now it's slightly darker.

I have darker hair then Gwen so I don't need a little black eyeliner under my eyes to define them, but if you are blond this might be required, make it a VERY thin line only in the lash line, the best way is to use the press method I used for the inner corner.

I curled my lashes a little using the Shu Uemura curler that's every-one's favourite and I have to agree. I had many many curlers in my day, I've tried every one I could get my hands on, warming curlers etc. non did the job the way the Shu Uemura one does. Seriously! I took the Cargo TexasLash mascara from the mascara stash I have and gave my lashes two coats of this mascara. The brush is not my favourite but no clumping occurred, so that was good. The thing I didn't like were that I needed two coats for a decent coating and it didn't lengthen at all. Usually the mascaras I use still coat lashes when I don't even see any more lash but this made my lashes look shorter. Also it was very dry and if I now feel my lashes they feel hard. I have no idea how easy this can be removed, but I don't think I'll use it again. It wasn't meant for my lashes, if anyone wants me to send it over for them to try, Holla ;) hahaha.

Final eye again:

Okay, the mascara, I have no idea how to sanitize this thing, it's only been used today so if there are people who want it, send me a picture of your lashes and I'll choose the one who's lashes I think could use this type of mascara most. If no one wants it, then into the trash it goes.

I hope you enjoyed my rambling, I talked more then I've done in my look-posts in a while. If you like the additional blabbering, tell me in the comments, if you want me to shut up and show you the eye look and only put down numbered steps, that's fine too but let me know, okay?

Have a great night everybody!

Chinese Dragon Mask (Petrilude) Video Tutorial

CCee — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:16:44 -0700

Petrilude has actually done more Halloween looks, but these are my favourites. If you want to see all of them or other makeup tutorials by Petrilude visit his youtube page.