Conquer Contouring

FEATURES Conquer Contouring

Let’s face it, contouring isn’t leaving the beauty world anytime soon. Celebrities including Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani and Sandra Bullock are huge fans. Contouring instantly enhances your natural bone structure to make you photoshoot ready in just a few steps. With the right techniques and preparation, you can have flawless skin contoured to highlight your best features and play down your worst, at the swipe of a brush.

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE 1. PREP YOUR SKIN

Knowing how to prepare the skin is the most important step to leaving you with a healthy, natural glow. Before you start to prepare, you need to determine your skin type. There are four types of skin: oily, dry, sensitive and normal. Some people have a combination of different skin types in different areas of their skin.

Start with washing and exfoliating the skin with a gentle daily use exfoliator to remove dead cells from the surface of your skin, this helps reveal the fresh cells and gives you a brighter and healthier complexion. The next step is choosing a good moisturiser. If you have oily skin, use an oil free one - however dry skin needs a moisturiser with all the right nourishment and essential oils to help soothe and revive the skin. Finally prepare your skin with a primer for make-up application. Primer is a must; it works as a base for foundation that keeps your make-up lasting longer.

2. FLAWLESS FOUNDATION

A great foundation is essential for flawless looking skin - but it can be tricky to get it right. Foundation is worn throughout the entire day so this product should offer your skin more than just make-up. Use a foundation that boosts hydration or has a builtin SPF. You also need to determine the look you’re going for, whether you want the skin to look dewy, matte, natural or even. The most important step in selecting your proper foundation shade is to identify your skin’s undertone. If your undertone is cool, choose a natural, beige or cocoa shade. If your undertone is warm choose a golden, tawny, honey or chestnut shade. It’s important to get the best colour match possible. Always test the foundation on your jawline and try to go for a product slightly lighter than your skin tone. Avoid piling on layers of product, there are lots of lightweight foundations that provide a good coverage and leave you with sheer, soft skin.

3. CONTOURING

A little contouring around the outline of your face gives your make-up an almost HD effect. When contouring placement is key and if you’re new in the game it can be difficult to know what to use and where. As a general rule select a shade of that is one or two shades darker than your natural skin tone. If your skin has a warm undertone, then you’re in luck as the majority of golden-brown shades will suit you. For skin with cool or yellow undertones, try warm peach shades that have a tan to soft brown undertone. Contouring tends to follow an E shape around the face. You would contour in places where your face would naturally be shadowed from the sun. Follow our handy guide here and tweak slightly according to your face shape for maximum effect.

BEST AREAS TO CONTOUR

4. HIGHLIGHTING

Highlighting is when you add light and reflection to certain areas for the face, making them appear more outstanding and eye-catching. The idea is to highlight areas that will catch the light. One simple rule to remember is highlighting tends to follow a C shape over your entire face. If you don’t have a highlighter handy you can use concealer or a foundation a shade lighter than your usual shade.

BEST AREAS TO HIGHLIGHT

Nose - down the centre of your nose to visually slim. Cheekbones - along the top of your cheekbones. Chin and Lips - the centre of the chin and the area between the lips and nose, right in the dip of the cupids bow. Brow bone - (under your eyebrows) and in the inner corners of your eyes to make them appear bigger. Dewy looks are very popular during the spring/summer months leaving your skin with a healthy-looking fresh glow.

TOP TIP: An illuminating, liquid highlighter on the cheekbones gives your face a more fresh, radiant appearance.

Hairline - right below your hairline at the top of your forehead, contour a little extra at the temples to visually slim the forehead.

Nose - along the left and right sides on your nose.

Cheekbones - create sleek cheekbones by contouring the hollows of the cheek (to find them suck in!)

Jawline - from the top of your chin to your ears and along the outer edges of the chin.

The key is blending which makes it important to be using a good blending brush. Powders are easier to blend and give a more natural look whereas creams and liquids give more powerful, dramatic results.

5. FINISHING THE LOOK

If you feel your face looking a little dull without some colour, then consider applying a small amount of blush to the apples of your cheeks but be sure to blend well with the other products on your face. Finish off with some lipstick and eye make-up. If you’re going for a bold or smoky eye then be sure to use a light or subtle lip colour to complete the look. Finally, topcoat your make-up with a setting spray or powder to prevent any make-up meltdowns.

FEATURES ronzed eautyB

Andy Lear, Spray Tanning Guy

The first thing to say about spray tanning is that it is not just spraying brown dye on people. When you have a spray tan you will go brown instantly but this is just the guide colour which will come off when you have your first shower. The magic happens when the DHA (the main active ingredient of spray tanning solutions) reacts with the amino acids in the skin to turn them brown. This reaction (known as the Maillard reaction) is much the same as the reaction that turns a cut apple brown if you leave it out. This happens several layers into the epidermis which

is why a spray tan lasts much longer than the guide colour. Unfortunately (for your spray tan) however, healthy skin replaces the epidermis every month or so and since the tan does not penetrate all the way though the epidermis you can expect your tan to last somewhere around a week, maybe a bit longer if you look after it.

So how do you look after it? Well before I start talking about what you should do after your tan, perhaps it would make more sense putting the horse before the cart and saying what you should do before your tan. There is a fairly short list of do’s and don’ts (which I sometimes refer to as the Tan Commandments!) Some of them are just health and safety stuff like don’t even get a tan if you have certain skin conditions or recent wounds, including unhealed tattoos. If you have not had a spray tan recently it is best to have a patch test to make sure you are not allergic to anything in the solution. This is colossally rare but is a requirement of most insurance companies.

Just before your tan you should not have a steaming hot bath or shower as this opens the pours of the skin which can fill up with solution making giving a small dot like effect. However because of the nature of the spray tanning gun, the air coming out can be quite cold and close the pours quick enough. Incidentally the cold air coming out of the front of the gun is compensated for by warm air coming out of the spray machine, in much the same way as some fridges work, so you may be freezing whilst your spray tanner is sweltering. Another crucial thing is not to use moisturiser before your tan as this works as a barrier. This includes using soap with moisturiser in it like Dove. It is fine to use it when your tan is done but not before. Often the spray tan artist will use a bit of moisturiser to protect parts of the body that do not want too much tan on them, particularly the elbows and knees, sometimes it can be used to protect the finger nails and to keep the tan away from the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet which should never be tanned as it looks unnatural. You do not really want to be putting a new tan on top of one that is wearing out because most tans fade somewhat unevenly, for example the face is usually washed far more than the rest of the body and your tan will often fade on your face first. One of the latest trends in spray tanning is ‘tan bombs’ which are just bath bombs that claim to remove old tan.

CONTOUR SPRAY TANS

On the subject of tanning trends, spray tan contouring is increasingly becoming ‘a thing’. This is a technique I first encountered with my Beau Bronze LVL2 course but learnt more about with Katie Quinn’s complete contouring academy and most recently the LVL3 Sienna X Master Tanner programme. This contouring can be done on the face or the body or both. I will be honest here and say that most of my clients are happy enough with a standard tan. Contouring, apart from requiring more training and practice, takes much longer and therefore will cost more, usually at least twice as much more. It also (well the way I do it for body contouring) requires an air brush as well as the normal HVLP spray gun. Facial contouring is easier and the principles that will be familiar to anyone that has ever done a make-up course. If a face is particularly round you can make it look less so by darkening the outsides of the cheeks. If a face is square then darkening the corners can help. An oblong face can be made rounder by strategically tanning the forehead and chin and so on.

You can get further into it by trying to change the appearance of some features, so for instance if you have a very wide nose, tanning just the outsides can make it appear thinner and faint vertical stripes down the neck can help draw attention away from a double chin.

In principle you could just tan the bits that need contouring but clients tend to want to leave a spray tanner looking brown all over so it is far more common to use a lighter tan for the all-over tan and a darker tan for the contoured places. For the face I just use a high DHA tanning mousse.

The benefit of facial spray tanning contouring, over just make-up, is simply that it lasts a good deal longer.

I am more convinced of the benefits of body contouring since this is not something you would normally address with make-up. The principles, however, are much the same. If you have wide hips, darkening the outsides of them makes them look thinner, if you have wide thighs again tanning the outside will make them appear slimmer. As will tanning areas on the inside of the leg. Boobs can be made to appear slightly perter by tanning a curved line over the top of them. This can get quite in depth. One of the standard tricks is to spray a thin line above and below the clavicle. This makes it ‘pop’ and if you can see, or think you can see, someone’s bones then that gives the impression of thinness. Following the lines of the biceps can make them look more defined and you can even spray a six pack on someone! Forget the gym!

For this I use an airbrush. It is possible to use the same HVLP gun you used for the all-over tan but I find you get far more control with an airbrush and you don’t need to worry about changing the solution or the residual solution in the gun.

If you are looking for a great spray tan get in touch with Andy the Spray Tanning Guy now.

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CONTACT:  andy@spraytanningguy.co.uk CALL/WHATSAPP:  @spraytanning guy