Monday 8 December 2014

Bonding with the Bestie

This evenings post begins with a little change. My face gets a bit boring really, and I'm not its greatest fan, so this evening, I used my best friend and flatmate, the fabulous Miss Chelsie, as a model.



Also, the Naked 1 palette is so well suited to her that she had the perfect face for showing off a make up look with it.

Chelsie and I have very different face shapes. Her least favourite thing about her face is that its always been fairly round. Personally, I think she has a lovely face with very pretty features and a great profile, but she never listens to me.

This means she insists on the old contouring, which I'm really not a fan of, and therefore am not particularly good at.

Despite this, we thought we would share my attempt. If nothing else, it will be amusing for you.

Sooooo.... to begin with, Chelsie is having a bit of a breakout at the moment, much like myself, so I started with my usual Collection concealer base, using a a brush to apply the product from my hand, to avoid any cross-contamination of bacteria.


Dat face tho. 

Chelsie's current foundation is in the same shade as my own Mac Studio Fix Fluid. The shade is NW15, but actually, since she's had some skin changes, she should probably be using an NC from Mac.

NW (Neutral Warm) Mac shades are best for balancing out blue tones from dark circles or veins on the face. Whereas the NC (Neutral Cool) shades are intended to camouflage red tones, and Chelsie currently has a lot of red in her face from breakouts.

However, NW is what we had, so we worked with that, using a Real Techniques Face Expert brush and a Beauty Blender to create a base, also using the Sleek Camoflauge and Conceal palette for under eye and to mask some of the redness.





Then came our first attempt at my round-face contour, which, as you can see, failed miserably.


Basically, when contouring, you want to shadow out the parts of the face that you want to push backwards, and highlight the parts you wish to bring forwards. Instead, I just seemed to be almost framing the parts of Chelsie's face she doesn't like. Also, we used a liquid contour, which is much harder. The product dries quickly, so by the time I'd found and drawn in these abysmal contours, they'd dried to her face and couldn't be blended.

Before trying again, in true Chelsie style, she had a little dance....


She had a little snack....


And we tried again.


Now, this is by no means a great example of round-face contouring. But its getting there.


This time, rather than chance it with a liquid contour, we stuck to powders. I used the Sleek bronzer from this duo, and the highlighter from the Benefit contour box, which I got from my friend T and have used to death. The bronzer in this little box is far too shimmery for contouring, which is best done with a matte bronzer like our Sleek option.

I used the Real Techniques contour brush to apply the contour and highlight shades to Chelsie's face, then a Beauty Blender to pad it out, and a So Eco stippling brush to blend it into her base.


I keep trying to get along with stippling brushes, and never seem to stick with them too long. However, this one is larger than most, and the bristles are much much softer than any others I've tried, yet blend in products even more efficiently.

We then used the Sleek blush in the shade 'Flushed', which is genuinely the most beautiful winter shade I've ever seen. Weirdly, if I looked at this in a counter, I'd think it would be better suited to Chelsie's darker colouring, but it didn't show up quite as well as it did on my own skin.



A product I find useful if you find that you use brushes for more than one purpose, is the Elf Daily Brush Cleanser.




This is a really useful little spray. This Real Techniques contour brush also doubles as the brush I use for blush, and rather than do a deep clean on it, I can give it a quick spritz with this cleaner, a swipe down with a muslin cloth and it will take off enough of the previous product to make it usable again, without soaking the bristles so that they need to dry out. Really helps keep your brushes fresh in-between washes.



This is my beautiful little boy Winston. He heard all the hilarity from our tragic contouring failure, and wanted to join in. He also has a round face, and would love to have Kim Kardashian cheekbones.

Next, we began Chelsie's eyes using this primer from Superdrug's B range. I'm actually not a great fan of this range, but Chelsie quite likes them, so it was an opportunity to use this primer which is mostly going to waste in my collection.

'


The base shade on Chelsie's eyes is Sin from Naked 1. In the crease we used Toasted, blended with Darkhorse.






I've been waiting for a chance to try out the Mac Fluidline eye liner gel for a while now, as its just been sitting in my drawers unused. I know this gets mixed reviews, but having tried this tonight, I am definitely glad I bought it. Its one of the smoothest gel liners I've ever tried, and it applied seamlessly with the Mac 208 brush.


Chelsie has far better brows than me, but I filled them in just slightly using the shade 'Brun' from my Mac palette, and the Real Techniques liner brush from the Sam's Picks set.




I used a set of quite fine strip lashes for Chelsie's eyes. She has a terrible habit of applying and then pulling out individual semi-permanent lashes, but pulls out half of her own lashes with them. Which is a vicious cycle, as then you have to keep applying falsies again.

These cute owl tweezers were bought just for decoration as they were £1 for a set of two from Primark and I didn't expect they'd be any good. However, they honestly work just as well as any others I've had. They are PERFECT for false eyelash application, because the owls have these little pointed ears which are ideal as little points for pressing the strip onto the lash line.





After a touch of Benetint on the lips, I set the look with the Smashbox Photo Finishing powder, and the Real Techniques blush brush, which I far prefer to use for powder because the thing is huge and far to big for just my cheeks.


So there you have it. I may not be the worlds greatest contour artist. But I have a patient, hilarious and beautiful best friend who I am lucky enough to have lived with for over a year now. We have been through far more together than a Contour Crisis and we have soldiered on, having only gotten stronger and happier.

If she does steal any more of my Pepsi Max, or leave any further clumps of her hair on my bedroom floor though...I may be posting about how to bury flatmates in back- gardens.










Kirstie

xxxxxx

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