Contouring and Highlighting For Beginners | IndiaJasmine

 

Contouring and highlighting can seem difficult at first, but with a little practise it can really change the look of your face...

I see people a lot on things like social media asking how to begin contouring and highlighting, so today I thought that I would put together a couple of steps to get you off to a good start and the overall structure of how to do it.

 

I'm going to try and use drugstore products because when you begin contouring and highlighting, you don't really want to be spending lots of money!

However, I will be including one or two more luxury items but I will try and list at least one alternative to this items if you don't want to pay the full amount.

 

To begin with I am starting off with a blank face of foundation. For my this I just used my normal product, which is the Revlon Colorstay Foundation .

 

To begin highlighting your face, you want to get a concealer that's one or two shades lighter than your foundation as we want to begin enhancing the light on our face.

 

For this I am using the Rimmel Hide The Blemish Concealer in the shade 001 Ivory, which is a little lighter than my foundation.

I am applying this in a triangular shape under my eyes to enhance the light with a Zoeva Concealer Buffer Brush.

 

I am also applying a little bit of the Rimmel Wake Me Up in the same shade in the same area. The concealer isn't as light, but it has light reflecting particles, which means that the enhanced light bounces of the skin to give a more radiant effect.
 

 

I am also running these concealers down my nose, in the centre of my forehead and on my chin.

This is again going to bring the most light to the right places and later really compliment the contouring. Annoyingly, this doesn't show up too well on camera.

 

For contouring, you could again use a cream like I did for the highlighting. However, this could become a little complex for a beginner and be too dramatic, therefore I'm just going to stick to powder for contouring.

 

To create the shadow, you want to use an ashy grey toned shade as it will replicate the colour of the shadows best.

I have found that mixing two eye shadows creates the best colour for me.
 They are from the Revolution Iconic 3 Palette and I use the Zoeva Face Shape Brush to place down the colour. I use the grey and brown from the palette.

You want to place the eyeshadows down where you want a natural-looking shadow to fall. This is below your cheekbones, the sides of your jaw line, down the sides of your nose, temples and sides of your forehead.

You can see the exact places in the picture below.

All of these shadows when blended out are going to create a more chiselled and prominent look to your face.

Now, I'm going to blend in the concealer we applied earlier for the highlight. To do this I'm going to use a mixture of the Zoeva Concealer Buffer, my fingers and my beauty blender.

Then, to blend out the eye shadows, that I used for contour, I used a Zoeva Silk Finish Brush and made sure that there were no harsh lines between the highlight and contour.

Next, is an optional step, which is baking your under eyes. This will intensity the highlight and make sure that no concealer is going to crease throughout the day!

For this, you will need a translucent, or very light, loose powder. Also, you will need a lot of it!
Use a beauty blender or sponge and pick up lots of the product.
Then, apply it underneath your eyes and attempt to make a slightly triangle shape to make sure nothing gets onto the contour. Also, I applied the powder underneath my contour to make it stand out more, down my nose and a little on the chin and forehead!
I used the Gosh Prime 'N' Set Powder for this but alternatives are products such as the Rimmel Lasting Finish Loose Powder.

Now, you want to leave it to set for ten minutes at least. Leaving the bake for more then this is going to make sure it's as set and intense as possible. Therefore, while your waiting for the powder to do it's thing, you could always fill in your eyebrows or do your eyeshadow if your careful with the fall out.
After this, you can just brush off the product gently with a large fluffy brush.

Once this is done, you can move onto highlighter again.

I started to create a glow that looks almost lit from within. For this I used the Mac Cream Colour Base in Shell.
You can use this before your foundation if you like, but I wanted a really intense look that the camera was going to easily pick up.
A more cheaper option would be the NYX Born To Glow Liquid Illuminators or Revlon Photoready Skinlights.  

I applied this with the Real Techniques Expert Face Brush on the tops of my cheekbones to add the 'lit from within look'.

Carrying on highlighting, I recommend the purple toned highlighter from the Revolution Sugar and Spice Palette. It's incredibly pigmented and catches the light amazingly!
I applied this to the tops of my cheekbones, overtop of the highlight, with a tapered fluffy brush which I believe is actually a paint brush. However, Sigma and Morphe do lots of similar ones.

Also, I applied this highlight to the tip of my nose, cupids bow and brow bone to add some more illumination, glow and just to emphasise these features. The highlight is just going to make your face catch the light in all the right places and bring those features out more.

Right now, we have a nice glow on our face, but I still wanted to intensify the cheekbones as much as physically possible. Therefore, I took the highlighter from the Sleek Face Form Palette in Light and just applied this over top of my cheekbones.

Now you can just finish of your face with a little blush, eyeshadow and whatever else you like.
Then... Your done and you can enjoy your freshly shaped face!

 

India Jasmine
♥