ABH - Cream Contour Kit Comparison

Contouring is a hype at the moment, but before contouring was hot I used to use blush and bronzer to create some depth by my cheekbones. Now there are contour kits with the right colors and ABH is one of the most popular brands. YouTube reviews enough, but there really is a lack of clear blogposts and photos - so today I'm going review, swatch and compare the Anastasia Beverly Hills Cream Contour Kit in light and medium!

Anastasia Beverly Hills Cream Contour Kit in Light

The contour kits all contain 6 shades, the 3 upper shades are highlighters, the 3 lower shades are contour hues. This palette is the newest packaging by the way, it resembles the MAC customizable palettes a bit. I got these at Planet Parfum but on the ABH website you can customize your own palette too and pick out the shades you prefer. The pans click out very easy.

Light is most suitable for light skin tones. Fair, Neutral and Banana are the highlighters - Java, Light Sculpt and Havana are the contour colors. 

Anastasia Beverly Hills Cream Contour Kit in Medium

The medium kit has the previous packaging, still looks pretty too! Banana and Cream are the highlighters in the palette. Warm Coral can be used as a blush, but also to correct dark circles, very handy! Cinnamon, Chocolate and Ash Brown are the contour shades in the palette.

Medium is suitable for light to medium/tanned skin tone.

Comparison of Light & Medium Contour Kit 

The first thing you notice is that medium has Warm Coral, and light doesn't have a correcting/blush shade. The shades in the light palette are cooler than the medium palette, those are warmer. They both have the color 'Banana'.

The cream blends very easily by the way, I always thought blending would be an issue, but it's very easy, and they also blend perfectly together. Not so hard to use!

How I contour

I'm not doing crazy things with contouring. I keep it simple, subtle. You won't notice that I blended creams over my face for about 20 minutes. So I usually only use 2 colors, a contour shade and a highlight shade (on the photos Fair & Light Sculpt from the light palette). Oh, and a tip: I use a damp brush with some fix+ (or cheaper and just as good Caudalie Eau de Raisin), this makes blending a lot easier. 

With contouring (the darker shade) you create shadow on your face, with highlighting (the bright shades) you bring light in to face. Highlighting is for everything you want to make stand out. 

Forehead

You can contour your forehead by putting the dark shade nearby your hairline, this will make it look smaller. The highlighter goes in the middle of your forehead and depending on how big/small it is, you can work upwards. 

Nose

I also highlight the middle part of my nose, and contour the sides. 

Cheeks & Chin 

You can see on the photos that I made a cheek sandwich: highlight - contour for the cheekbones, to create depth and make them more visible - highlight again. I also draw a contourline by my chin, for a slimming effect. I bake the highlighter and my concealer under my eyes with the W7 Banana Powder from my webshop. 

Anastasia Beverly Hills - Cream Contour Kit in Light and Medium (€54,95 - available at Planet Parfum)

(Eylure lashes in 107 (€7,99) / W7 Baked Banana Powder (€6,49) - (from my webshop Beauty & Bobs))

I got my kits at Planet Parfum (you can buy them online here) and I always thought that cream contouring would be really hard, but it isn't. These palettes blend very easily and are also very pigmented. But I do prefer my ABH powder contour kit, because that goes a lot faster than cream contouring. 

Edit from a question below: is cream better than powder?

The biggest difference between powder and cream is that you just need to find out what works best for you. Some say that cream contour can look cakey, personally cream gives me more of a natural sculpted look than powder. Cream does have a much higher coverage of course. The key is just to blend everything well, cream and powder. If you have an oily skin type, you may find powder better. If you're into the dewy look - I would recommend cream. And if you want to mattify everything, powder may be the better choice. But layering can also be fun, on my last photo I did wear a shimmery Tom Ford highlighter too.

Which one would you choose, light or medium?

Love, Rani