Minimal Modern Sculpting With the Make Up For Ever Pro Sculpting Collection

Call me crazy, but for some reason contouring makes me think of classical sculpture.

Trust me, I know I’m a little weird, but there’s something oddly sculptural about watching makeup artists apply deep shades in the hollows of the face and brightening hues on the high points to blend and create a contoured face. And honestly, although I love watching how everything comes together extensive contouring just isn’t for me on a day-to-day basis.

Make Up For Ever has created a range of products ideal for the expert and the contour novice alike: the Pro Sculpting Collection. Each easy-to-blend, easy-to-use product has been made with convenience in mind to subtly accentuate without overdoing it.

The stars of the collection are the Pro Sculpting Face Palettes ($45 each) available in four color combos fully thought out in terms of depth for varying skin tones.

From left to right, each palette offers a matte highlighting shade, a matte contouring shade, an iridescent highlighting shade and a pop of color for the apples of the cheeks. Rather than opting for a challenging powdery formula, each of Make Up For Ever’s four shades are creamy and buildable, meaning that the user is able to control their own destiny. The contour shade buffs to add natural shadows, while the others are equally subtle on the skin. Ideal for fresh-faced fans of light contouring, the Pro Sculpting Palettes give you everything you need in one place.

Make Up For Ever has also included rather untraditional sculpting products in the collection to offer subtle shaping for both lips and brows.

The Pro Sculpting Lip pencils ($27 each) are one part satiny lipstick, one part pearly cream-to-powder highlighter, and are meant to add volume to specific areas of your lips.

Although the combination may seem like a one-trick pony, the highlighter can be applied either over, or under, the lipstick, which creates a different effect, and allows for buildable intensity based on your own preference. And more on that later.

Make Up For Ever has also cleverly paired a brow pencil with a similarly light highlighting powder (and a spoolie!) to create sculpted brows in one three-in-one tool. As far as I’m concerned, the Pro Sculpting Brow pencils ($27 each) are incredibly travel and on-the-go friendly, as everything you need to create the perfect arch is at your fingertips in a single compact tube.

I have one quibble, and one quibble alone, with the design of the felt tip applicator. Although it’s not problematic as a component of the Pro Sculpting Brow products, when applied to the center of the lips after using the lipstick, the felt tip gets stained with the lipstick, and then it rubs against the highlighter in the packaging. It makes it harder to get a good payoff with the highlighter on future applications, and as you can see from some of the swatches below, if you forget and apply it to your cupid’s bow after the center of your lower lip to create a voluminous pout like I did (oops!), you end up with a smudge of the lip color above your lips…

Granted, this is user error, but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to apply the highlighter to my cupid’s bow in the future because of the remaining product that cannot be removed from the felt applicator.

Where do you stand on contouring? Do you prefer a heavy look, or do the subtle contouring products in Make Up For Ever’s Pro Sculpting collection appeal to your softer side?