All You Need To Know About Contouring

Today let’s learn about contouring, its importance and how to do it in the first place. Contouring is giving shape to an area of the face and enhancing the facial structure through makeup, that’s how Beau Nelson, a makeup artist describes it.

You might still be wondering, what’s with the hype and why at all should you bother knowing about it or trying it. Well here is the reason, because it could quiet literally change your life and your face.

 It involves using blusher, bronzer, highlighter and concealer to highlight the parts of your face that you want to show off, to minimize the parts that you don’t like, to create hollows and shadows where there aren’t any and to work your angles; whether you have a round face or a chiseled jawbone.

Every woman wants to standout in a crowd, and living in the makeup world today, you need to make the time to learn every detail if indeed you want to look unique in the midst of the crowd.

First of all, just like in everything, you need to have certain items as the first step.   What’s in your makeup bag? Because you’ll need a set of decent makeup brushes, , a liquid foundation in your usual shade, a liquid concealer in your usual shade, bronzer or a foundation/concealer slightly darker than your natural skin tone, blusher (a cream formula will be easier to blend) and a highlighter.

 Let’s get started, in the first place, you need to apply a base of foundation and primer so that you have something to work from. Clean skin is important with a makeup wipe and a cleanser with a toner also gives a cleaner skin before applying the primer, this moisturizes your skin and makes it ready for the primer.  It’s important to look for a formula that either hides pores or that minimizes their appearance, smoothing the appearance of the skin and evens out tone and texture. Once set, use a foundation brush to apply foundation in any area that needs extra coverage and concealers to any spot that might need to be concealed. Blend using the brush until you have an even perfect base.   

Now you can apply your bronzer using a brush for extra precision. You need to apply it to any area that you want to minimize- if you have a high forehead, just under your hairline, if you want to minimize your nose, brush along either side of the nose, if you want to make your cheekbones pop brush into the hollows of cheeks and if you really want to show off that chiseled jawbone, brush along the edge of the jaw and just under the chin. It might look a bit odd now, but we’ll blend all a little bit later!

When you are done with your bronzer, then comes the part where you apply your blush. For rosy cheeks, apply it above the line of bronzer under your cheekbones. Try not to make it too obvious, because the best features of your face are being highlighted already with the contouring and adding too much blush will just make it more difficult to blend. Just a bit will do.

Then comes the most important part of it all, highlighting!  Opt for a formula that  easily blends into your skin. Now with this, make sure it’s in moderation because too much of it, will make your face shinny and too little will not be noticeable at all. Just dab it on at first and you can always add more later. Apply down the bridge of your nose to hide crooks, bumps or lumps across the top of your cheekbones, add a tiny little dab to your cupid’s bow and just under your bottom lip, if you prefer fuller lips, along the brow bones to make your brows stand out and for extra sheen, over the top of your blusher once everything has been blended together.

At this point, you are almost done. All you need right now is for it to blend so use a use a clean brush to blend and blend  a little bit more until there are no noticeable lines anywhere on your skin. Once you’re all done, dust a setting powder over the surface of the skin to keep all of your hard work in place. And voila! You are good to go!

Hope you’ve learnt something, why don’t you try it and let’s have your feedback, because at Zaron, all we want is to bring out the best in every woman!

Yours Sincerely,

The Zaron Blogger