In the set you receive a face chart to help you learn the best way to contour your face shape, a pencil sharpener as these as chubby sticks and won't fit into any old sharpeners and then theres the three pencils. Unlike a cream contour palette with pans of colour, the Smashbox Stick Trio features their contouring pencils so you can literally draw on your warpaint. The included face chart is great because not one shape suits all when it comes to contouring. Contouring is literally a way of tricking the eye into seeing shadow and light upon the face using make-up and thus can alter the shape of the face. Using a contour shade puts areas of the face into shadow and thus makes it appear slimmer while highlight can make areas appear larger. Because people have different face shapes this chart helps you to realise what area is best for you to contour and highlight in order to achieve a balanced facial shape.
The three shades of the trio sticks are the highlight, contour and bronze. The highlight is a very light neutral shade and blends out perfectly to give light. The contour shade is a very ashy based colour, I find these types of shades much better for contouring the extreme hollows of the cheek bones and down the centre of the nose as they don't leave that orange hue when you blend out. The bronze pencil gives a more radiant, warm colour for adding glow just slightly above the contour to complete the look. The consistency of the sticks is very soft meaning application and that all important blending phase is made easy. Nothing worse than an unblended product when it comes to contouring. I like to blend out with my damp Beauty Blender to achieve that perfect seamless look, then finish with some loose powder and a little powder bronze to deepen my contour a little more. I love the pencil application because it allows precise placement of where you exactly what your contour and highlight meaning you use less product in total.
I'm so in love with these little contour sticks, they make application a dream. I'm obsessed with the contour colour as I think it's the perfect shade especially for contouring the nose due to the ashy hue. I think as a set this is a great bases for cream contour, especially if you don't want a full palette or are just starting to experiment with it. I think the consistency is lovely and I'm really impressed how well the colours blend out and bake. My only complaint with this product is that unlike some other cream contours it only comes available in this particular colour shading so if your darker skinned the highlight colour is going to be too light for you. Hopefully they will release a different tonal shades in the future because I think this is a great product to use as an introduction to cream contour. I will be using these amazing little sticks in a future contour tutorial, so keep an eye out.
Somebody once told me contouring is as simple as three. If you draw a number three with your contour upon your face it hits the perfect spots: your forehead, your cheekbones and your jawline. But this set takes the rule of three to a new level. As cream contours tend to be a fuller coverage make-up and take a little more work to blend out, I think having this easy step-by-step trio makes it a perfect way to try out cream contouring because it's literally as simple as one, two, three.
Have you tried Smashbox's Contour Stick Trio? Do you prefer cream or powder contour?
Let me know in the comments below.
ERM, I need these in my life. Literally just added them to my never ending list of payday beauty products, and then your going to help me perfect my contour. Yep? Okay. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteLove reading your blog babe 😘
www.withloveamiee.blogspot.com
You need to get them, I swear by them now! Even did a little clown contour post to publish soon ah! Of course I'll help you perfect that contour gal xo.
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