Pictorial: Contouring your eyes

Contouring. The beauty buzzword of the moment. Contour kits are everywhere I look and everyone is after those chiseled cheeks. I am a big fan of contouring (anything to try and fake some definition, am I right?) my face, but what about contouring your eyes? I know.

When I was in the hairdressers last week - I know, I finally got my hair cut! - I was flicking though Grazia and saw an interesting snippet on eye contouring. How to make your eyes look more defined, bigger and just generally better. Basically the article suggested running a darker colour through your crease and smudging the same under your lower lashline. I was intrigued, and mentally made a note to try it out as soon as possible. After trying it out I also attempted my first 'pictorial' - lovely Alina does posts like these which are so helpful and so pretty - so I thought I'd give it a go.

The products you need:

• A neutral creamy eyeshadow base, preferably one that is close to your natural skin tone. The goal is to smooth things out and even everything out.  I used my ol' faithful, Painterly from MAC, which is so creamy and just brilliant as a base. 

• Two brushes - one for the crease and a smaller one for smudging colour under the lash line. I have a MAC 217 and an old Crown one.

• A shade to contour with - you can use any natural taupe sort of shade. I used MAC Harmony, because I'm enjoying that at the moment. You could use an eyeshadow, or a cool-bronzer or the Kevyn Aucoin sculpting powder. Pretty much anything, as long as it's matte and something that can create a shadow. 

• Prep your eyes - put the base all over your eyes. Next, grab some product on your fluffy blending/crease brush. I find it easiest to look down when applying shadow in this way, little tip for you there. Using a windscreen wiper motion, sweep the product back and forth until you have the right amount of depth.

• Keep blending, and adding until you get the look you're after. This style looks best when it follows the shape of your eyes & doesn't wing out too much, I think

• Using the smaller smudge brush, run the colour under your lashes. It depends how low you want to go (hehe), but basically you're creating a shadow, which gives the illusion of your eyes looking bigger. 

... and that's it. It's so so easy, but contouring your eyes gives such a defined look. I love it with a bold lip, because it doesn't look like too much. What do you think? Is contouring your eyes for you?