Reshape Your Face: How to use Highlight & Contour

Bring out your best features and minimize your not-so-best ones. With the right know-how and plenty of practice, you can easily use your makeup to reshape your face and bring attention to what you love about your face while subtly hiding the flaws. All you need are the right makeup tools, colors/shades, and application tips. Of course each face shape has its own instructions for reshaping so make sure you follow the right set of directions and application tips. In most cases, you’ll need the following:

• Large, round makeup brush
• Foundation
• Pressed Powder
• Blush
• Bronzer
• Highlighting Powder

General Tips to follow:

1. To find out what shape are you, simply touch your face and feel the structure.
2. Always contour with a matt finish powder/cream. Everything with a shimmer in it will make the area to pop out.
3. Whether you use cream or powder, always start with the creams first.

Oval Shaped face

Characteristics

• Considered the perfect shape face Length is equal to one and a half times width
• Equal distance from hairline to eyebrows, from eyebrows to tip of nose and from nose to chin
• Forehead and jaw the same width
• Prominent cheekbones

Techniques

1. Apply blush just under the ball of cheekbone, directly below the outer part of the iris
2. Extend in smooth arc, fading toward top of ear

Celebrity Ovals

Cameron Diaz, Cindy Crawford, Courtney Cox Arquette, Elle MacPherson, Heather Locklear, Mariah Carey, Sharon Stone, Tyra Banks, Uma Thurman, Jessica Alba and Julia Roberts.

Diamond shaped face

Characteristics

• Forehead and cheekbones are narrow
• Wide jaw line

Objective

To balance Forehead and jaw line must appear wider

Techniques

1. Apply lighter shade of foundation at angle on both sides of forehead.
2. Apply lighter shade of foundation at angle from middle to bottom of jaw line.
3. Your cheekbones are your best asset, so be sure to give them a little blush. Apply blush on the ball of the cheek in a crescent shape. Blend outward out toward hairline.

Celebrity Diamonds

Katherine Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Linda Evangelista.

Heart shaped face

Characteristics

• Widest across forehead
• Tapers down to cheeks, then down to narrow, sometimes pointed chin.
• Jawline is not prominent

Objective

To balance face: forehead must appear more narrow and lower half of face more wide.

Techniques

1. Apply regular foundation before contouring makeup
2. Apply darker shade of foundation on either side of forehead to diminish the width of your upper face.
3. Apply lighter shade of foundation at either side of jaw line
4. Apply blush starting under the ball of the cheeks
5. Blend away toward the center of the ear

Celebrity Hearts

Ashley Judd, Claudia Schiffer, Lucy Lawless, Michelle Pfeifer, Naomi Campbell, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Lisa Kudrow.

Rectangle/Square shaped face

Characteristics

• Width of cheeks and forehead are similar
• Width of jaw line and forehead are similar
• Prominent jaw line
• Angular overall appearance

Objective

To soften angles Forehead and jaw line must appear narrower

Techniques

1. Apply regular foundation before contouring makeup
2. To make forehead appear more oval, apply darker shade of foundation on either side of forehead and blend
3. To make jaw appear more oval, apply darker shade of foundation on either side of jaw line and blend
4. Apply concentration of blush directly on the ball of the cheek. Blend toward the top of the ear for a square face and middle of the ear

Celebrity rectangles

Janet Jackson, Jessica Simpson, Isabella Rosellini, Mandy Moore, Hilary Swank, Mena Suvari, Sandra Bullock, Calista Flockhart, and Demi Moore.

Oblong shaped face

Characteristics

• Width of the face is thinner then the length
• Pointed/Narrow chin

Objectives

Face length must appear shorter and lower half of face wider

Techniques

1. When enhancing a long shaped face never highlight, as this will make your face look longer
2. Contour across the lower section of your chin to shorten your face length
3. Apply Blush to the apples of your cheek to widen your face. The proper way of putting blusher on a long shape face is to start at the cheeks’ center and sweep it outwards across the face.

Celebrity Oblongs

Gabrielle Reece, Niki Taylor, Stephanie Seymour, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kirstie Alley.