#PaleGirls: Contouring
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Welcome back to the #PaleGirls series, a feature here on Isobel Rose aimed at helping all of you lovely pale-skin beauties look fabulous. Now I know that this feature isn't for everyone, but being an extremely pale girl myself, I know how hard it can be to find makeup suited for our fair complexions. Something that I've always found quite tricky is finding contour colours that don't look ridiculous on my skin tone - most are too orange, whilst others can make you look like you've been in a bar fight the night before. But no more! I've found two powders that work for me even when I'm at my palest, and I'm here to share my wisdom with you all today. Now before we get going, I'm not saying that you have to buy high end products to get the right colour match, or that these are the only two contour colours for fairer skin, but these are the two I've come across that have always worked well for me. Starting off at the slightly cheaper end of the spectrum, we have MAC's Powder Blush in Harmony which comes in at £18 and does the job just nicely. The texture is beautifully creamy and easy to blend, and you get a hell of a lot of product for your money. Winner. Then we have a slightly newer release, the NARS Contour Blush in Olympia (£30) which does exactly what it says on the tin. I have written about Olympia here, but if I was to compare the two, I would say that the NARS shade is ever so slightly lighter than Harmony, but honestly I doubt you could tell the difference, especially once applied.
Okay - so we've got the contour colour picked out and ready, so now it's time to choose which tools to work with. In my experience, you can achieve different intensity levels of contour with a wide array of brushes, so my two picks in this post aren't mandatory. However, if you're looking to get a nice defined contour without ending up with random lines all over your face, I highly recommend the following brushes (if not something similar). First up we have the RT Flat Contour Brush - a rectangular shaped stiff face brush that allows you to place a good amount of product exactly where you want it before blending out. The thick density of the bristles on this brush means that you can really concentrate the colour, and it's shape aids even the clumsiest of contourers when placing it correctly. This brush can also be used to blend out the colour, but I honestly prefer something a bit fluffier, like the Sephora Pro Angled Blush Brush. I picked this baby up whilst in Valencia, and it's quickly become a favourite for blush and contour alike. The shape of the brush means that you won't end up spreading the contour colour too far from where it should be, but it's fluffy enough so that you don't end up looking too harsh.
Contouring is a skill that even I am yet to master, but I hope this post has been useful to all of you, not just my fair-skinned sisters out there. Good luck, and let me know if you have any favourite products/tricks for contouring!
Okay - so we've got the contour colour picked out and ready, so now it's time to choose which tools to work with. In my experience, you can achieve different intensity levels of contour with a wide array of brushes, so my two picks in this post aren't mandatory. However, if you're looking to get a nice defined contour without ending up with random lines all over your face, I highly recommend the following brushes (if not something similar). First up we have the RT Flat Contour Brush - a rectangular shaped stiff face brush that allows you to place a good amount of product exactly where you want it before blending out. The thick density of the bristles on this brush means that you can really concentrate the colour, and it's shape aids even the clumsiest of contourers when placing it correctly. This brush can also be used to blend out the colour, but I honestly prefer something a bit fluffier, like the Sephora Pro Angled Blush Brush. I picked this baby up whilst in Valencia, and it's quickly become a favourite for blush and contour alike. The shape of the brush means that you won't end up spreading the contour colour too far from where it should be, but it's fluffy enough so that you don't end up looking too harsh.
Contouring is a skill that even I am yet to master, but I hope this post has been useful to all of you, not just my fair-skinned sisters out there. Good luck, and let me know if you have any favourite products/tricks for contouring!
