Face It!

Who doesn’t love intense cheekbones? Sometimes you’re not blessed with contoured cheeks at birth, but you can create that illusion. Contouring can work on any face, the round, long, and narrow.

You can contour with cream or powders. I think it’s best for normal to dry skin to use creams, and combination to oily to use powders. The reason creams are good for dry skin types is because they drink into the skin for a long lasting wear. Powders are good for oily combination skins because they keep facial oils from streaking your look.

Use a contour color that’s 1-2 shades darker than your complexion. This is what will make your bones stick out from the rest of your face. If you have a golden undertone apply a bronzer with a reddish tone to it, and if you’re a pink undertone apply a bronzer with a golden sun kissed tone. The same goes when choosing a good highlighter as well. If you’re not sure what you’re undertone is, here’s a quick trick to tell: on your wrist press your finger to your skin, and quickly pull away, the color your skin shows where your fingerprint was indented, pink or yellow, is your undertone.

To make your face appear narrow, contour under your cheekbones working the color upwards towards your temples in a C shape. When contouring a man blend the cheek color downwards. Men’s cheekbones are different than a woman’s, downwards motions will appear more natural on men. On the cheekbone always apply your contour color starting from the hairline and work the product down towards the apple of the cheek. Applying the product starting at the apple of the cheek up to the hairline will make the face look fuller. The depth of your product should always be closer to the edge of your face in.

Make sure you’re really blending your skin with the contour color, you don’t want the color to look blunt. Blend your contour bronzer with a separate clean brush to blend more product to the skin.

Cheekbones aren’t the only contour accessory, your nose and jaw line are just as fierce when contoured. Apply a deeper shade on the sides of your nose to make your nose appear thinner and a highlighter on the nose bone to make it look longer. For a structured looking jaw, apply a contour under the face, right under your jaw line and apply a highlighter right where your jaw line begins.

Contour sculpting cream choice: Nars Multiple or use 2 shades higher in your liquid foundation color for a real natural look. (Apply with a flat foundation for high pigment or a stippling brush for a light finish.)

Contour powder choice: MUFE sculpting duo (Apply with an angled blush brush for an intense pigment and blend with a clean brush, or a domed shaped powder brush for lighter look.)

Highlighter cream choice: MUFE HD blush

Highlighter powder choice: Smashbox Soft lights

Now your face is ready for it's close-up!