Help for the Bronzer-Challenged.

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I just recently started using bronzer. I mostly do some light contour with it (and yeah, I know it's not true contouring, but I don't want to wear that much crud on my face!), and I have been working with the brush that came with the bronzer palette I use: 

Too-Faced-Bonjour-Soleil-Summer-Bronzer-Wardrobe.jpg


Is the included brush sufficient or should I be buying something different/special? The brush is a semi-flat Kabuki style (more oval than round, if that makes sense) and is not a bad size, I just want to find out how to do it properly. ;) /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" /> 

 
You can use that brush just fine, but contour and bronzer are very different!

If you want to get a better brush because you think that one isn't working well for you, I suggest real techniques brushes. But, you can use that brush just fine. 

The difference between bronzing and contouring is that bronzing is meant to hit where the sun hits! The high points of the face! Tip of the nose, chin, tops of cheekbones, middle of forehead Basically where you highlight you are putting a very small amount of bronzer onto your skin and blend, blend, blending. You want a little bit of shimmer in this so you still get those highlights on the face and collar bone while getting your suntan look.

With contour you are pretending your face is skinnier than it is and making fake shadows by using a powder that looks almost grayish to make a fake shadow along those areas. You can pinch your brush so it becomes more elongated to do that. You want to make sure the powder is matte on this side so that it actually looks like a shadow.

Those are the main differences. A bigger, fluffier brush should be used for bronzing, and a more elongated brush for contouring. Never forget your neck blending downwards so you don't have a weirdly tan face!

Tell me if this makes sense or not! :) /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" /> I'm a makeup artist and that's what I tell my clients. They usually nod but sometimes you aren't sure if they actually understand!

 
I follow you just fine! This is great stuff. :) /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" /> 

Using the palette above, I've been doing a little contour with the darkest shade on the left, and using the lightest multishade one on the right as the actual bronzer, but it's light enough and shimmery enough to provide a subtle highlight. 

Is that Chocolate Soleil something I could use as a light and subtle contour? I'm a 4Y05 at Sephora's ColorIQ, and used to be a NC20 at MAC, though I'm not sure that's still accurate since I get a lot more sun in Florida. Cool tones on my face make me look like a corpse. (I still use them for my eyes, because blue is the compliment to brown.) I don't want to go to full-on Kardashian contour, I just want a little bit of 'cheat'. :) /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" /> 

I have freckles. A lot of them. I'm figuring that with bronzer, I'd follow the freckles -- the places where I have the most of them would be the bronzer spots. I like the Snow Bunny because it's light and gives the freckly muddiness a little more glow. I'm not trying to look darker, so much as I want to look glowy, if that makes sense. With the freckles, I don't think I need much bronzer, so I like the light shimmery multishade because it gives a tiny bit of highlight, too.

I should say outright that I'm a tinted moisturizer/sheer BB kind of girl -- because of the freckles, a full-cover foundation generally looks really fake and awful on me. I like the freckles and I don't want to conceal them, but I do want to even out the tone of my face aside from those, if that makes any sense at all.

The only real full-coverage thing I wear is concealer, and that's a whole 'nother set of challenges as far as blending goes. I wind up using three tools to do it: Apply with tiny little concealer brush to place everything where I want, blend with the Beauty Blender, use a larger and fluffier concealer brush to feather out the edges around my cheeks and the corners of my eyes. I may be able to bring that down to 2 when my BB micro.minis arrive, but the BB is just too big for me to see what I'm doing when I blend around the eyes. (Did I mention that I'm horribly nearsighted?)

 
I use the chocolate matte bronzer from Too faced as a contour subtly mixed with a matte gray eyeshadow, but I think you could just use the chocolate on it's own. If you aren't really looking for anymore color than you have, I'd stick with contouring/highlighting. I think tan, sultry looks are good for some but hard to keep up with. I do them often for girls who go clubbing. Also on prom people like it. Everyday I'd suggest that you just stick with the farthest to the right for highlighting, you can even pinch your brush and only use certain colors if you need to.

But yeah it works pretty well I'd say you could totally do it, it shouldn't be that big of a problem!

 
 Back when I taught myself from Way Bandy books, I used 3 different shades of foundation, one perfect match, one I had to custom mix with a little white to make a shade lighter (high light), and one that was one to two shades darker for contour. I don't know if anyone does that any more, but using foundation for contour looked so much more natural to my eyes. @@vogueboy could probably also add some good tips as well.

 
 Back when I taught myself from Way Bandy books, I used 3 different shades of foundation, one perfect match, one I had to custom mix with a little white to make a shade lighter (high light), and one that was one to two shades darker for contour. I don't know if anyone does that any more, but using foundation for contour looked so much more natural to my eyes. @@vogueboy could probably also add some good tips as well.
I'm pretty sure he talked about an entire cream contour routine in a different thread that was really helpful! I wish I could remember which one it was...

I personally don't do much contour, and haven't at all during the summer because, imo, adding a contour into my face that is already two shades darker than normal would just look insane. So I've been just going with my bronzer (Givenchy Poudre Bonne Mine in Douce Croisiere) and I use a bit more of heavy hand on the top of my cheek bones to contrast vs. the underside... it's like the opposite of contouring? LOL. Then blending it all out with a nice fluffy brush and I've really been liking the natural glow, plus it still slims my face without the added step of contouring. :) /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" />

 
 I never do highlight and contour for anything but photos. I'm not a fan of it for real life, but that's just me.

 

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