Today’s post is all about Kim Kardashian’s anticipated KKW Beauty Powder Contour and Highlight Kit. Kim is known for her gorgeous, contoured face and is a true beauty icon to me. The Contour and Highlight Kit definitely sounded interesting to me, because I feel like this is something Kim’s makeup artist would use as well as she would use if she does her own makeup. But how do you contour and highlight? I’m going to explain this!
Let’s start off with the question: what exactly is contouring and highlighting? It’s a way to enhance your face’s features and, if you want to, it’s even possible to change the way your face looks. It’s great to give your face some depth and dimension, as well as highlight your best features.
How To Contour and Highlight
For the people who are new to contouring and highlighting the face, no worries I got you! Before I dive deeper into the KKW Beauty Powder Contour and Highlight Kit, I’m going to explain how to contour and highlight like a pro first so you’ll look as snatched as Kim Kardashian herself!
Step 1. Apply your foundation first.
Step 2. If you want to make your forehead appear smaller, dust the contour powder up to your hairline and bring it down to your hairline. Don’t forget to keep blending until it’s worked into your skin and looks natural.
Step 3. If you want to make your cheeks look snatched, use an angled brush, and apply the contour shade into the hollows of your cheek using back and forth motions. Again, make sure to blend this into your skin.
Step 4. If you want to define your jawline and make your neck appear slimmer, use the contour shade along the length of your jaw and around your chin. Just be sure to blend downwards in order to make it look like you have shadows there.
Step 5. If you want to make your nose look smaller, use a small angled brush and start at the inner corners of your eyebrows and paint a thin line down towards the tip. Repeat on the other side of your nose and blend it into the skin so you don’t see a harsh line.
Step 6. To highlight your favorite features, make sure to use a lighter shade (this can be a matte shade too if you don’t like shimmers) and apply them to the tops of your cheekbones, your cupids bow, the bridge of your nose, and/or the tip of your nose. You can also apply it to your brow bone to highlight the shape of your brows.
If reading this doesn’t make sense, here is a video of NikkieTutorials to show you exactly how to contour and highlight.
KKW Beauty Powder Contour and Highlight Kit
I’ve been wanting a little while before I actually purchased anything. The shipping costs and customs charges were holding me back. However, after seeing the reviews (which weren’t all super positive though) I wanted to see and try this product myself.
I went ahead and ordered myself the KKW Beauty Powder Contour and Highlight Kit in the shade Light. This palette contains 4 shades, 2 highlighters, and 2 contour shades. I would say that one of the shades is more like a bronzer and the other works well as a contour shade. Besides the Light palette, there’s also a Medium and a Dark palette, so every skin tone has a fitting palette. See the KKW Beauty palettes in the picture below.
The shades in the Light Palette are the following:
- Highlight I – Soft Champagne
- Highlight II – Soft Peach
- Contour I – Light Tan
- Contour II – Mid Tone Beige
Included in the Powder Contour and Highlight Kit is a two-sided brush. One with a rounded side and one with an angled side. The rounded side is for applying the highlighter and the angled side is for applying the contour.
Even though I don’t think this brush is bad, I don’t really see myself reaching for it. This probably has to do with the fact that it’s dual-ended so I can’t store it in my brush holders. Moreover, I have other brushes (for example, my Sigma Brushes) I like even more so the brush just doesn’t feel necessary to me.
How To Use The KKW Beauty Kit To Contour and Highlight
There are two ways of contouring, using powder contour or cream contour. KKW Beauty has the solution for that: a cream stick and a powder kit. Since I personally felt like powder would be easier for me, I decided to go for the kit. But how do you use this kit to contour and highlight your face?
First of all, I make sure my base (foundation and concealer) is ready. Then I pick an angled brush and apply the Contour II shade to the hollow of my cheeks, my jawline, forehead and temples. After that’s done and blended, I use a powder brush to apply Contour I.
I personally use this shade as a bronzer, to warm up the face. The goal with bronzing is to create the illusion of a warmer complexion by blending the product where the sun would naturally hit your face: temples, nose, around the edges of your face, etc.
Since both of the Highlight shades are shimmery, I normally pick one or combine the two to highlight the tops of my cheekbones, my brow bones, and the bridge of my nose.
How I Personally Liked Using The KKW Beauty Kit
First of all, the pans are huge and contain 0.26 oz/7.5 grams each. You’ll get a lot of product in this palette which is definitely a pro. Moreover, there’s a pretty huge mirror in this palette as well. This is always a plus for me.
The highlighters in the palette are okay. They leave a natural glow, but they’re not really buildable to a more blinding glow. That’s okay if you’re looking for a natural glow. It works fine! Is it special? No, it isn’t.
Moreover, I think highlighters are very powdery and even somewhat chalky. It does accentuate my pores/texture a bit. I can work with it, but it’s not the best highlighter I’ve ever used. I wouldn’t buy them as a single. I wouldn’t even repurchase the palette, because the highlighters are disappointing me.
The Contour shades are better, even though I consider one of them as a bronzer. The actual Contour shade is my favorite out of this palette and the bronzer looks good but is pretty warm so I feel like it won’t work for every pale/light skin tone. Both these shades are less powdery and chalky than the highlighters, thankfully.
Overall, I wouldn’t repurchase this KKW Beauty Powder Contour and Highlight Kit since it was meh. I would love to try the créme contour stick though, to see if this is any better!
