My Secret Contouring Weapon: NYX Blush in Taupe

I hope those of you that celebrate Chinese New Year had a delicious dinner and quality family time yesterday.  And a wonderful new year, of course.  We did the whole red-envelope-under-pillow-only-eat-a-bite-of-the-fish-plus-red-underwear-and-a-billion-other-traditions-thing, and I baked blueberry muffins.  Because, you know, dragons like blueberry muffins and it’s the year of the dragon.

Switching gears to coherent beauty talk…

For the longest time, I thought I couldn’t get the hang of contouring.  Each time I’d try it, I wound up looking ridiculous.  Maybe I’ve smacked my head on too many walls, because it never occurred to me that it was the color and not the technique that was the issue.  I’m on the pale side (think N15), but started off with pigmented bronzers.  Picture the Pillsbury dough boy with orange marker drawn on his cheeks, jawline, and down his nose.  Do you see the problem here?

I purchased this NYX blush two years ago, declared it HG (holy grail) practically on the spot, and have been using it ever since.  Why then, has it taken me so long to review it?  Well mostly because when I bought it, I didn’t have my weird touch nothing until photographed obsession.  Instead of snapping a picture, I just went ahead and used it like a normal person.  And now it makes my soul hurt to post a picture of a blush that is clearly past the prime of its life.  But I will do it anyways:

It’s a matte taupe that’s on the cool side, with more grey than brown, but not so grey that it looks unnatural.  A little bit of this under my cheekbones, down the sides of my nose, under my jawline, and suddenly I have semi-amazing bone structure.

For whatever reason, I could not get a good picture of this on my face.  There is actually a really great example of how this product gives me cheekbones on my school’s website, but I’m too stalker-leery to show you guys.  So you’ll just have to look at these terrible-lighting images, and make them better in your head:

Magic in a pan, I tell you.  It does fade a little bit as the day goes on, but it’s still there when I take off my makeup at the end of the day.  It’s also quite pigmented, so apply with a light hand.

I get the best results with my Walmart HD Contouring brush (review here), and I’d recommend that you invest in a contouring brush if you don’t have one already.  A regular blush brush works for me too, but not as well.  A pan will last you an eternity, and retails from $6-9, depending on where you buy it.  I think I bought mine for $8, at some accessories boutique in the mall.  Well worth it.

Thumbs up for

The natural shade, affordable price tag, reasonably good availability.

Thumbs down for

Sadly, it’s not going to work for everyone.  If your skintone is medium-dark, or if you have very warm undertones, this might not be the way to go.  But look on the bright side!  You have a whole world of bronzers at your disposal.

Also, I suppose the packaging isn’t the fanciest.  But it’s travel-friendly, not too flimsy, and in line with the price tag.

Final decision

If you have pale skin and need a contour color that looks natural, I highly recommend that you try this one (and wave goodbye to your Pillsbury pumpkin stripe days in the process).

For those of you that are new to contouring, let me steer you in the direction of Rae’s videos.  They are amazing.  And she has killer cheekbones.

Do you contour?  What’s your go-to contour color?

~Makeup Morsels

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