face shapes

Contouring. Just the word strikes fear into many hearts, but this technique shouldn't be left only to the pros. A simple swipe of bronzer and highlighter in the right places can bring light to your best features (and detract from others). All face shapes are beautiful and unique in their own right, but artists try to give the illusion of a more oval face by creating shadows on the face. "The key to a perfect contour is proper blending and remembering that light accentuates the face, while shadowing recedes it," Floriane David of Make Up For Ever Academy says.

In order to contour at home, choose an eye shadow, foundation, or bronzer that is about one shade darker than your complexion, and grab an angled brush. Get your personalized guide to contouring based on your face shape when you read more.

In the beauty world, your face shape can determine many things from your next haircut to your makeup tactics. Finding the correct measurement is a simple equation of proportions. While the most common shape is oval, others include round, square, triangle, diamond, and heart. Want to find out what category you fall into? Grab a mirror and follow these simple steps to discover your personal shape when you keep reading.

Your face says a lot about your emotional state and energy levels, but can you really learn much about a person's salient personality traits from their features? Some people believe that face-reading is a useful practice and rely on texts like the Han Dynasty's Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine by Huang Ti to conduct health and problem-solving analyses.

According to Huang Ti, there are five elemental face "types": Water, Earth, Fire, Wood, and Metal. Your features reveal the kind of energy that drives your personality in both positive and negative ways. We decided to have a little fun with physiognomy, so if you're curious about what people in the third century thought your face said about you, just keep reading.

An organization called Face Research has been getting lots of attention for its most recent project, which has calculated "average" faces for women from 41 regions. To obtain the results, a collection of head shots from around the globe was gathered, with imaging software used to synthesize a normative face. It's quite interesting to look at, but I can't help but wonder how many pictures were actually used to construct each face. Also, it's a little odd to me that all the women are clear-skinned and really young looking. Still, it's worth a look. To see all 41 average faces, just keep reading.

Have you ever wondered what the "secret formulation" is for picking out eyewear? While there are no exact rules, by looking at your skin tone, eye color, face shape, and hair color, your clues are already there. Over the next few days I'll give you tips so that you're well-prepared for your next visit to Frames R Us. To kick this series off, let's start with face shape. To find out more, just keep reading.