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Vintage makeup trends are everywhere at the moment, and we love this 60’s inspired look created by Laura Hannon, Creative Executive at The London School of Beauty & Makeup.

To recreate this look at home, you’ll need to start by applying a good base like MAC Face & Body. A dewy finish is key to keeping it up-to-date.

Apply a setting powder with pink base tones to give a more vintage look. Shu Uemura and Bare Minerals do great ones. Use a very light hand to apply this, you want to keep the dewy finish and just take the shine off the T-zone.

Laura recommends using a cake liner to get the best liquid liner effect, however if you don’t have that, a gel eyeliner would be a good alternative. We like Maybelline’s Lasting Drama.

Keep the rest of the eye makeup light. Blend a charcoal shade onto the lid and use a small detail brush to apply under the bottom lash line. Use a cotton bud to smudge and create a smokey effect.

Then add lashings of your favourite mascara, we love They’re Real.

Use a light pink lipstick as the final touch. We like Avon Colour Rich in Berry Glitz but if you can’t find the right colour for you, Laura recommends blending two together to create your perfect shade.

To complete the overall look, back comb the hair for Bardot oomph.

Voila, 60’s inspired gorgeousness!

The London School of Beauty & Makeup offer makeup & beauty courses full-time, part-time and at weekends. Take a look at their courses here. Laura Hannon is their Creative Executive and professional makeup artist. You can tweet Laura @makeupLSBM or the school @londest

Professional makeup artists and those with die-hard cosmetic addictions have long known about using contouring to shape the face, but 2012 can definitely go down in history as the year the word got out and contouring went mainstream! Not so long ago you would’ve had some very confused faces looking at palettes they had no idea how to use, but not any longer. Now celebs like Kim Kardashian are posting pic of themselves mid-makeover, and beauty blogs and tutorials are becoming ever more popular, this is a trend that we predict will be followed by the masses.

So, what exactly is contouring and why do so make makeup artists swear by it? The idea is that you can highlight areas of your face that you want to make more prominent, and fade out those that you don’t. No longer are chiseled cheekbones the stuff of dreams or only achieved on a starvation diet, when done correctly contouring can sculpt your face perfectly. When applied badly, you do run the risk of being mistaken for a clown, so beware this trick does take a little practice!

Look around most beauty counters now and you’ll see that they have their own versions of countouring products. Before you make a purchase, there are a couple of things you need to think about. Firstly, make sure you buy a flat bronzer, one with gold or shimmery tones is not right for contouring. Secondly check you’ve got the colour right. Although you need your contouring colour to be dark enough to make an impact, you don’t want to go too dark and like you’ve run amok with some shoe polish. And finally, which ever product you chose, check how well it blends. As with most makeup tricks, the key to contouring is to blend, blend, blend!

Some of the products you might light to take a look at are:

Mac Pro Sculpting Creams – As the name suggests, these contouring colours come in cream form. You can select from five shades, three contour colours and two for highlighting. £17.50 each.

Sleek Face Contour Kit – A powder kit designed specifically contouring, with a flat bronzer and shimmering highlighter.There are three shades to choose from; light, medium and dark. £6.49.

Smashbox Step by Step Contouring Kit – A three-piece kit containing two very blendable contour colours as well as a highlighter & brush. £35.

Now you’ve got the right kit, you’ll want to go ahead and use it. The first thing to do is decide which areas of your face you wish to accentuate, and which you want to tone down. By contouring, you can make your face slimmer and more defined, as well as detract attention from your less than favourite features. If you already have razor-sharp cheekbones for example, you probably don’t need to worry about contouring them, but you might want to focus on slimming your nose. If you have a perfect looking nose already, then you might want to sharpen your jaw line. It’s all about making the trick work for you.

Essentially, all you need to remember is that you use the darker colour to shade and “hide” areas, and the highlighter to, funnily enough, highlight! Follow the guide below for a starting point:

The key things to note here, is the contouring used around the nose, cheeks and jaw.

By highlighting the middle and using the darker shade in two lines either side, you’ll create the effect off slimming the nose.
When trying to give the illusion of supermodel cheekbones, use the dark shade to draw a stripe across the hollow just under your cheekbones. You can then apply the highlighter on the actual cheekbones to accentuate them even further. We also like to add in a bit of blush just on the apples of the cheek, and then blend it lightly up the cheekbones in between the contouring shades.
If you have a rounder jaw line that you’d like, applying the darker shade along the jawbone will help sharpen it up and give your face a more sculpted look. Likewise, if you have a strong jaw and want to soften it up, apply highlighter along the jawbone and you’ll be surprised at the difference.

Always apply your contouring creams/powder after your foundation and concealer and we know we’ve said it already but BLEND, BLEND, BLEND! You don’t want to be looking like these two: