THE BASICS #2: CONTOURING

Greetings, and welcome to an all new installment of The Basics! In this series I tell you all the basic steps for getting that make up look down. Ideal if you're a make up novice, but also for the advanced amongst us. Today we'll be looking into contouring.

Now for those who don't know what contouring is, it's basically making the features of your face stand out a little bit better. Now, I won't be getting into the whole Kim Kardashian contour, but I will tell you the slightly more easy and everyday appropriate version of this. Let's get started.

After having applied your base the next step would be to contour your face. For this you'll need a cool toned - matte brozer, a highlighter, and a blush.

So first step is to get your bronzer out to create a shadow on places where you want a bit more depth in your face. These areas, depending on your preference, being: The hollows of your cheekbones, the temples, sides of the nose, and your jawline. Now the best thing is to build up the intensity. Don't start of with a heavy load, cause you might end up looking like an indian with stripes down your face, and we wouldn't want that, would we? So apply a light dust of a cool toned bronzer (that means one with a slightly more grey undertone) at the above mentioned places and build up to your preference.

Next step is to take out the blush to add a little warmth and natural color to your face. Depending on your skin tone, you can pick a blush and add it to the apples of your cheeks and blend it out upwards to the tops of your cheekbones. Again, a light hand is the key here. Build it up lightly until you have reached the opacity you are looking for. Remember: adding more is easier, than taking away.

Than last but not least is applying your highlighter. Where the bronzer creates an illusion of shadow, highlighter creates the illusion of 'standing out'. Places where you'd normally apply highlighter would be: Tops of your cheekbones, underneath and slightly above your brow bone, cupids bow and the bridge of your nose.

And that's that. The non Kim K version of contouring sorted! Stay tuned for the next installment of The Basics where we'll be talking all things eyeshadow and how to apply it!