OK, you’ve seen it. It’s out there. Contouring. Just the word can strike fear into the hearts of women who love make-up. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be a sissy or a cross dresser, to be brand new or fairly new to the world of make-up. Basically, contouring is a technique that’s supposed to revolutionize your face. Light and shadow, tricks for the eye, minimizing features you don’t care for and amp’ing up natural shape. Yeah, yeah. I get that. I want that.

However, when I first heard of contouring, it looked like women with a bunch of smear-y, random lines all over their face. It looked like someone wasted special makeup to draw on a face, and how in the world was I ever going to remember where to put those lines and have them result in some amazing look? So I doubted it for myself. I’m not an artist. I just put make-up on the old fashioned way. Why do things have to change?
And yet, I wanted the magic of contouring, too. It looked so effortless for others. So I committed myself to it and was determined to figure it out.
And I did. I had my ‘a-ha moment’.

What You’ll Need For Contouring

This first week, I will be talking about contouring prep, tools and what you’ll need to contour. Next week, we get down to business. But first things first. Pull up your chairs, ladies.

So ‘contour’ and ‘highlight’ are actually two tools you use in contouring. At first, I wasn’t even sure what they were using. I’ve seen women contour with creamy sticks, I’ve seen women do it with powder, brushes, beauty blenders, pallettes and multiple shades of OMFG why does this look so difficult?! What I will say is that I use sticks and not powders. Powder has it’s place on a face, but for definition and feeling like you can actually see what you did, you don’t want something that can fade fast.

You could actually buy a contouring stick and a highlighting stick, but I prefer to keep it simple. Have a foundation stick two shades darker and a foundation stick two shades lighter. Those two sticks plus your regular foundation and powder is all the product you need. The darker stick is your definition, the lighter stick is your highlight. And as far as tools go, get yourself some make-up sponges, too.
See? Not so scary so far, right? You’ve got this. You’ll be rockin’ your contour en femme in no time!

Wrapping Up This Week

At the risk of turning this first installment into the Great American Novel on contouring, I’m going to bring this to a close to allow you time to obtain the tools you need and absorb this contouring thing in manageable chunks. Heavens knows I didn’t learn overnight, and it took practice for sure.  The great thing about girls is that they share their knowledge, and others benefit. That’s what Amber Academy is about, so I’m happy to ‘de-code’ something as intimidating and/or confusing as contouring. Being a feminization Mistress is fun for me, but so are all the sissy friendships that I’ve made! Thank you for being a part of it, and get ready to contour next week!