Recently contouring and highlighting has been all the craze and so many celebrities have been looking chiseled to perfection. For the average beauty lover or someone who is just starting out, contouring and highlighting isn't very easy to master. Hopefully these tips and tricks can help you out.

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Evidently contouring can transform your face by creating shadows to slim areas or make your cheeks appear more structured and prominent. On the other hand highlighting brings forward the higher points of your face, such as the tip of your nose, cheek bones and above the eyebrow arch.

Before you actually start contouring and highlighting it is important to determine your face shape so you can decide what features you want to highlight and what you want to contour.

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Hopefully the chart above can help you to distinguish your face shape and now the following chart is a rough guide of places you're recommended to contour and highlight for your particular face shape. Remember at the end of the day it is your face and if you want to contour or highlight the way a square face or diamond face is suggested to then you can do you! There are no set rules in makeup, just guides to help us start off :)

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Contouring and highlighting for every face shape

Another general rule when it comes to contouring and highlighting, which I personally follow is to do a "3 motion" on the right side of my face and an "E" on the left.

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 To help find my cheekbones I suck in my cheeks while looking into a mirror or place a brush flat from the top of my ear going diagonally toward my mouth. I also always stop my contour at the end of my brow/corner of my eye.

I mentioned above that contouring is done to mimic shadows. A few common places one would contour is generally their forehead to make it appear smaller, or alternatively if your forehead is on the smaller size you would place your highlight there to make it appear larger. You can contour your nose to make it appear straighter, below your lower lip to make it look fuller, your cheek bones as well as below the jaw line to disguise a double chin.

Personally I find a powder contour a lot easier than liquid or cream but again it is all about preference. Choose a shade that is roughly two shades darker than your normal skin tone and that is on the cooler side of brown as it is intended to create a "natural" shadow.

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Now lets talk highlight!

As mentioned above the places you highlight are the areas on your face you want to bring forward. These areas include the spots on your face where the light would naturally hit. The highlight shade is generally one to two shades lighter than your actual skin shade because you want your face to appear like the light is always on it bringing forward your best features. By highlight I am referring to a lighter shade concealer! Unlike contouring I always highlight with liquid or cream. Once you have applied your lighter shade of choice you then set it with a lighter shade powder to match and keep that area bright as your normal foundation shade will just darken that area and defeat the highlighting purpose.

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Many brands brought out contour and highlighting kits throughout 2015 which is helpful for beginners as they have every shade you would possibly need in one compact place. There are also contour and highlight sticks available.

Here are a few (there are so many more) at varying prices:

NYX

Anastasia Beverly Hills

Australis

Kat Von D

NUDESTIX

That concludes the second post in my 'A Beginners Guide series'. Hopefully this helped you out and remember that the purpose of contouring and highlighting is to create dimension so have fun and play around to figure out what method and guide works best on your face.

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There are so many Instagrams dedicated to all things beauty and a lot of their feeds include flatlays featuring the perfect white background. I am here to share my tips and tricks on how I achieve my white background and crisp photos.

What you need:

• Good lighting! This is the most important part. Either set yourself up beside a big window that allows a lot of direct sunlight to come in or take yourself outdoors. Alternatively you can use white lighting such as a white light lamp.
• A white piece of cardboard
• Your camera - I use my phone camera (Huawei P8)
• An app to edit with - again I use what my phone offers but some apps I occasionally use are VSCO or Photo Editor Pro. You can also play around with the settings Instagram offer.
• Bluetack - this stops products from rolling away

What to do:

Personally, as mentioned above, I take all my photos outdoors. Whenever the sun is shining I make the most of it and snap as many photos as I can get!

I set myself up in my driveway under direct sunlight. As pictured below:

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​To take the photo I usually stand above the cardboard and move around until there isn't any shadow.

Once I have taken the photo I then go into my phones editor and adjust the lighting and sharpen the photo. For those of you who may have the same phone as me these are generally what I put the photos settings on:

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If you are using Instagram to edit your photos you would adjust the highlights feature and bring it towards the right of your screen. This will whiten your background and make it a lot brighter. If it alters your products I find that lessening the 'shadow' helps to darken them back up a little.

Hopefully this was somewhat helpful for you all and after reading this you will notice that there is no big secret and it is doable. Ultimately it is all down to good lighting and making a few minor adjustments to enhance the white backdrop. No photoshop needed!

Thank you for reading and happy flatlaying :)

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Dry skin doesn't always need to mean cakey looking makeup. To follow up my post last week about my foundation routine for dry skin here are some products I love using and I find are helpful.

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// P R I M E R //
Face of Australia Face Base Primer
Any moisturising primer will work and make sure you do moisturise before applying makeup. It helps to make your base smooth and moisturised so whatever you apply next does not cling to your dry areas.

// F O U N D A T I O N //
These are the foundations in my collection that I have found to be the least cakey looking on my skin. I still do wear all my other foundations.
Nars sheer glow
Bourjois Healthy mix serum
Bourjois Happy Light Foundation
Chanel Perfection Lumiere

I also find that mixing dewy foundations with more matte foundations helps a lot!

// C O N C E A L E R //
I haven't found any concealer to not work for my skin since its changed from oily to dry. Maybelline Fit Me is my favourite though!

// P O W D E R //
I used to always apply powder but things have changed now. I generally do not reach for it because it just makes me look powdery and dry. The only powder in my collection that doesn't make me look cakey at all is MAC's studio fix powder. This looks good on its own or over foundation.

// E X T R A //
To help every foundation sit nicely on my skin, especially the matte finish ones, I love mixing in Australis's High Lights Mineral Face Highlighter. It takes away some of the matte finish but it helps so so much.

You can also add in a beauty oil with your foundation or your moisturiser to help it be less drying and more dewy.

I hope this post helped some of you guys out, have a lovely week :)

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​My skin type has changed this past year and finding a foundation that sits right has been a challenge. I didn't want to throw away any of my older foundations so here is how I make any foundation work for me. If you're interested keep on reading.

A moisturising primer has become a must have for me. I've ditched pore fillers and colour correcting primers as I found moisturising ones work best. My absolute favourite is Face of Australia Face Base Primer. I really want to try Makeup Forever's hydrating primer but I need to work up to spending $50 just on a primer lol.

To make matte foundations work for me I use a liquid illuminator and go over my dryer areas with a damp beauty blender. Usually I do apply foundation completely with a beauty blender but if it's a sheer coverage foundation on its own I use a brush with it.

Dewy finish foundations generally look better on my skin and don't cling to dry patches. Again I apply with either a beauty blender or brush depending on the coverage I want.

After every foundation application, once it has set a little, I go over it with a dry beauty sponge to soak up any excess product to prevent it looking cakey.

I only apply a thin layer of foundation and build in up in areas I need it otherwise it won't sit nicely and does not look good at all. Usually I don't set my face with any powders to prevent it looking more dry and cakey. If it's a night out I would only set certain areas like my nose, forehead (not between my eyebrows because this is my worst dry patch), apples of my cheeks and my chin.

I sometimes finish off with a spray that I made myself to take away any powdery or cakey look my skin has. Whenever I do these things I can wear any foundation and it works for my skin.

My current favourite foundation is NARS Sheer Glow! It has buildable coverage and doesn't cling to dry areas at all when I follow all above steps. Thank you for reading and have a lovely day.

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