Blush isn’t meant to sculpt your face, its meant to enhance it – give it an inner glow. If you’re placing your blush in the wrong spot on your face you may be aging yourself without even knowing it. So read on, my friend, let’s get your glow back!
is your blush aging you?

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In This Episode We Cover:
- Using makeup to sculpt your face
- The aging effects of poorly placed blush
- The differences between blush and contour products
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click here to read the transcript!
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Episode 26: Show notes
Today, I want to delve into a topic that has been on my mind lately: blush.
As someone who has spent years experimenting with different makeup techniques, I realized that my approach to my own blush might be inadvertently aging me.
In this blog post, I will share my personal journey of understanding the true purpose of blush and how we can use it to enhance our natural beauty without unintentionally sculpting our faces into the shape of a skull.
So, grab your favorite blush brush and let’s dive in!
Blushing Mistake:
Confession time: I have been guilty of using blush as a sculpting tool, as I’m sure perhaps you have at times, as well.
Over the years, my experience in corrective and prosthetic makeup has conditioned me to think of makeup as a means to sculpt and shape the face – it is just innate after so long.
However, after some self-reflection and pretty much a moment of realising that my coral blushing wasn’t hiding my double chin!, I discovered an important truth.
Blush shouldn’t be used to sculpt our faces.
Instead, it should be employed to uplift and enhance our natural features.
Understanding Aging:
As we age, we lose fatty tissue in various areas of our face, including the temples.
This loss of volume can lead to a deeper set appearance in the temples, contrasting with the outer point of our cheekbones.
You might think that applying blush and contour in the temple area would help restore balance, but that’s a big no-no.
In our quest to defy aging, we don’t want to end up unintentionally creating a skull-like appearance.
Blush Placement:
So, where should we apply our blush?
The answer lies somewhere in that happy place, in the middle of our cheeks – that part we want to keep warm and fleshy, and most of all, glowy.
By focusing on the apples of your cheeks, you can achieve a youthful, fresh-faced look.
Now, if you really want to enjoy a more lifted effect, sure, feel free to sweep the blush upwards towards your hairline. Just remember to stop short of those temples. And rather than using blush to sculpt the temples, try applying a little soft highlighter to create roundness and fullness in that area.
Remember, you’re not going for the skull look here!
The Color Theory Principle:
I’m going to indulge and take you back a few decades to my high school art class, where I first encountered this concept that is steeped in the world of color t
Warm colors, like those found in blush and bronzing products, are known to come forward and uplift our features.
On the other hand, cool shades, such as those used for contouring and shading, tend to recede.
Understanding this principle is crucial in achieving a well-balanced and flattering makeup look. So, remember to choose warm, uplifting tones for blush and bronzer, while reserving cooler shades for your contouring purposes.
Embracing Individuality:
In the pursuit of beauty, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by societal standards and trends.
However, it’s essential to remember that each one of us possesses unique features and charms.
Instead of trying to fit into a particular mold, I feel we should all embrace our individuality and use makeup to enhance our unique very own, natural beauty.
Blush should be viewed as a tool to highlight our radiant selves, not to conform to someone else’s idea of perfection.
In a way, my blush revelation has completely transformed my approach to makeup application.
By understanding the true purpose of blush and adhering to the principles of color theory, you can easily avoid unintentionally aging yourself.
So, go on, sculpt your face with love, and cherish your own uniqueness, and embrace the aging process with confidence and grace. And to be honest, on the occasion I do throw on a face, I even forego the double chin shading altogether – because hey, it’s there, I know it. And you know it, and guess what else – it doesn’t make me a bad person, right?
So, let’s go forth, armed with our favorite blushes, and bring out the best version of ourselves! If you feel like it, that is 😉
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Click here to listen to this episode!
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Episode Transcript
Welcome back to Five Minute Face Talk. I am excited to talk all about blush with you today because I have been seeing a little bit of something, and to be honest with you, I am totally guilty of this as well.
And it just comes from years of corrective makeup, years of doing prosthetic makeup, or even aliens and things like that, where you’re sculpting the form, you’re sculpting the face with shading and highlighting, and in effect, you are. You’re sculpting. And that’s one of the biggest messages I try to get across to you with these podcast episodes, is to use makeup to sculpt and enhance your face.
But what are we doing with blush? Because blush shouldn’t be sculpting our faces, should it?
Kerrin [00:01:11]:
But one of my favorite techniques from a long time ago is to not only use the blush across your cheeks but then just to sweep it up almost as an extension from where your eye makeup finishes at the outer corners of your eyes, into your eyebrows and essentially out into your temples.
But as we get older, what I find can tend to happen is that you lose a lot of fatty tissue that used to sit where your temples are.
And of course, if you feel your face and you think about your skull underneath that temple is much deeper set, isn’t it, than the outer point of your cheekbone.
It’s just something to watch out for and to be aware of, because you might actually be aging yourself and you don’t even know it. And worse still, if you’re using a contour or a shading product for the very same thing, which is a big no no, you don’t need to put that shading up high in your temple. It’s not doing you any favors, and it’s not helping you.
Okay, so where do you put your blush? You put it on the middle of your cheek, and you can sweep it up towards your hairline if you like.
Kerrin [00:02:31]: But promise me that the older you get, you really want to avoid sculpting your face into the shape of a skull. It’s not flattering. And none of us, we don’t want to look like skulls, except maybe on Halloween and even then, that’s only once a year.
Honestly, I think the older we get, none of us even want to look like skulls then.
And as much as I always love to lose a bit of weight and I see it off my face first, even I don’t want to look like a skull.
I’d take my moon-shaped face over a skull any day.
So let’s just go back a bit.
Kerrin [00:03:05]: Again, I’m guilty of this. I use my blush as a sculpting product as a shader, and it’s usually because I don’t spend much time doing my own makeup, because we all want to spend as little time as possible.
But remember that you have contour products, you have shading products, and at a pinch you have bronzing products that are deeper in tone and hopefully a cooler undertone than your blush, which tend to be warmer undertones.
Now, this all goes back to a very simple color theory principle, which I learned in high school from my wonderful art teacher, Miss Svilans. Thank you for teaching me and instilling me with color theory that is still with me and still in my head to this day over 30 years later. And that is that cool colors, recede and warm colors come forward.
Now, there’s much debate about this, but it’s true in terms of light and in terms of color.
So, if you want to create a contoured look in your jawbone or under your jawline, as is the case for me, because I love hiding this second friend of my chin that I’ve got going on.
Kerrin [00:04:17]: You want to use a cool shade, so that’s the first thing to remember and that your blushes, your bronzers, they should be warm uplifting, freshening tones and not cool shading receding tones.
So just keep that in mind and remember that those products all have a different purpose.
Let’s finally just get back to those temples. Keep the blush out of the temples.
If you want to lift the blush up, bring it forward.
Try using it just from the outer corners of your eyeshadow and then just stopping it an inch or so forwards from your hairline at your temples.
You can almost want to do the opposite and that is put a little highlight in there to give your face roundness and fullness and the fleshiness that does tend to fall away as we get a little older.
So that’s it for today, short but sweet, and I’ll see you next time.
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