Summer Contouring: Sleek Face Contour Palette Swatches

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

11 comments
Contour kits have been around for some years now, but for some reason they seem to be especially popular in summer. I figure it must be because everyone is trying to give themselves a tan or the illusion of lost winter weight. LOL! That, and the fact that a lot of summer colours are often perceived to look better with a tan or contoured face. Anyway, like bronzing, contouring is another of those things I don't normally do, primarily because I'm just too lazy. But since there are people interested in contouring, why not? And the most accessible and cheapest contour kits are the Sleek Contour Palettes, which I'll be swatching today.

A good contour palette is hard to find, primarily because a lot of companies assume people don't know the difference between bronzing and contouring, and so produce a lot of contouring powders that are too shimmery. ARRGH THE HORROR. While I'm tolerant of shimmer in bronzers, I personally maintain that ideally, a good contour colour should be matte, especially if it's a darker-than-your-skin shade you're using to shade your face with. The reason is that the shade is supposed to to enhance your face's natural shape by creating the optical illusion of shadows, and noone I know of has a shimmery shadow.

Which is why I think that given their drugstore background, Sleek has done a pretty decent job of their Face Contour Palettes. These come in three colours - light, medium, and dark, and the lighter shade is a highlighter, which is shimmery and an approximation to what Sleek probably assumes the average skintone of their users might be, while the darker colour is a matte contouring powder. I actually thought these were eyeshadow duos when I first looked at them, LOL, and although I'm sure they can be used to that end, I'll just swatch them as contouring products.

Sleek Face Contour Palette

Light is a set of a light pink-beige highlighter with a light brown matte contour powder.

Medium is a light orange highighter with a medium browm matte contour powder.

Dark is a tan shimmer highlighter with a dark brown matte contour powder.

Pigmentation on these was quite good, as you can see from swatches, which is why I thought they were eyeshadow duos at first! LOL! The texture was also not too shabby, it was like their powder blushes (which was one of my earliest swatches HERE, albeit in terrible lighting).

There isn't much else to comment on, what you see is what the colours pretty much are, although it's worth noting that the matte contour shades for the lighter colours are a bit more orange-based than the matte contour shades for the darker powders. The Light contour shade has the most amount of orange, while the Dark contour shade doesn't have much orange in it. This strikes me as weird, because for the highlight powders, it's the other way around - the darker the sets get, the more orange the highlight powders get. So it's like the undertones of the contouring powder and highlighting powder don't quite match up to me. But otherwise, I think they aren't too shabby overall, and definitely good value for money.

11 comments:

  1. I have the light one and find the contour shade a bit too orange. But the highlight half of it is lovely!

    They are quite good though for the money so I'm not complaining too much! :) Great post hun! :)
    X

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  2. thats some serious contouring!

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  3. I have the kit in Light and I love it. I had one of those MAC Sculpt and Shape duos and I much prefer the Sleek kit.

    Kelly x

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  4. I think I will buy this. I need a contouring kit for my kit anyway Great post & swatches

    http://makeupbykim-porter.com/blog

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  5. Great post!

    colormenana.blogspot.com

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  6. I have this in light, and I love the contour, but I hate the highlight. The highlight is way too glittery for my liking!

    Also, I've tagged you in a post :)
    http://beauty-and-grace.blogspot.com/2010/06/share-love.html
    xxx

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  7. thanks for visiting my blog :) haha you're like me I love contouring (yes like you said... illusion of weight loss! wahahah!) but always too lazy/running late so I rarely do it... XD

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  8. I'm so special, I was looking at the highlighter shades (apparently my brain just didn't process the presence of the obviously darker contouring shades on your arm too) and got to the dark one and was like 'WHY IS THIS THE ONLY ONE THAT'S AN ACTUAL CONTOUR SHADE?!' :|

    And the Cullens probably have shimmery shadows ;]

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  9. I really am quite jealous of those that have sleek palettes, they are so pretty & the products always seem to work so well.

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  10. I recently ordered one of these in Light, which I regret. I far rather wouldve ordered it in Dark because the color of the contour shade is as it should be. Meaning, not orange toned. But the highlighter in the Dark palette is absolutely hideous, as is the one in the Medium kit. They should have made one contour kit with the 3 contour shades - Light/Medium/Dark - and 1 highlighter, being the one in the Light kit. Really feel I wasted my money on the Light kit as I pretty much use only the highlighter in it :-( WTH was Sleek thinking when they put these contouring kits together? Who in god's name wants an orange highlighter??

    As for the highlighters being glittery, I didn't personally find them that way at all. Yes, they are shimmery, but not glittery. If a person is worried about the highlighter magnifying their pores too much, they can always use a fan brush to apply it very lightly. This is exactly what I do & it works great.

    But Fyrinnae still makes the BEST highlighters & bronzers/contouring products out there. They glow, as opposed to shimmer, and they're completely devoid of any orange tones. Super gorgeous. Not to mention super pigmented & very well-priced.

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  11. I really want those!!!!

    Following your blog now, would you mind checking mine out? :)xxx

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Thank you for commenting! I read each and every single comment! If you ask a question in your comment, please check back to this post, as I will reply in a comment to this post as well :) Please note that comments with soliciting links to shops or websites will be removed. Thanks!

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