BEAUTY SECRETS || Concealers

Concealer is the secret weapon of the beauty world. It can hide a multiple a sins but it can also bring out features of the face that can shape it in a whole new way. Over the past two years I have been experimenting with the potential possibilities that concealers hold by trying a lot of concealers on the market and I think I've figured out a few tricks to get the best results.

CONCEALER TO CONCEAL

This is the standard use of concealers. It's in the name afterall: to conceal. According to the dictionary, to conceal means "to hide; withdraw or remove from observation; cover or keep from sight". Pretty self-explanatory, right? With concealer, you want to keep others (or yourself) from seeing something whether or not that's the dark circles under your eyes or that puss filled little blighter that's making your chin its playground.

To conceal, I prefer to use a liquid concealer. I love the Urban Decay Naked Skin concealer and use this underneath my eyes. But at the moment I'm really enjoying using a cream concealer. Benefit's cult favourite concealer, Boi-ing is my weapon of choice. I apply it just underneath my lower lashline, under that little fold, to prevent creasing. Plus, when it comes to blending it out, the concealer will naturally be blended up towards the lower lashline area without looking overdone.

With cream concealers, and any cream product in general, it is a good idea to warm it up between your fingers before applying it to the area that you want to cover. The warmth of your hands make the product more malleable and easier to work with and blend out. Take a little on your ring finger and rub it against the opposite finger to warm it up and then apply. Your ring finger has the lightest touch which is perfect for the under eye area.

Another great use for a cream or liquid concealer is to prime the eyelids for eyeshadow because they naturally conceal the blue or redness of the eyelids. All you have to do is set it with a translucent powder, face powder or a cream eyeshadow and you're good to go. I always take the excess of my concealer from under my eyes and apply it to my lids. 

For a more budget friendly liquid concealer alternative, the Collection Lasting Finish Concealer does an amazing job for me. It has great coverage without crumbling or settling into the fine lines of my face. I've raved about it here.

My favourite budget cream concealer is the Lasting Perfection Concealer from Rimmel. I use the shade Porcelain and use it in the exact same manner as Boi-ing. 

CONCEALER TO HIGHLIGHT

Using a concealer shade that is a step or two lighter than your foundation is a great way to highlight your face. The basics of highlighting your face is to apply concealer to the highest points of the face, i.e. under eye to cheekbone area, centre of the forehead and chin. Not to be confused with highlighting your face so that you look like you're glowing. 

For the under eye area, the basic shape that you want to create is a triangle. Depending on your face shape it can be isosceles, equilateral or a scalene, acute or obtuse. Who knew that mathematics would be in a blog post about concealers? I sure didn't and I wrote it. Anyways....

My weapon of choice is the Urban Decay Naked Concealer in the shade Fair Neutral. The formula is light-weight on the skin and blends out beautifully. I'll be going over my favourite methods to blend out concealer later on in the post.

The doe foot applicator makes it very easy to apply the product. It's also great if you want precision application. Great for those pesky triangles.

I start off by drawing a line from the inner corner of my eye straight down by my nose and one out following the curve of my eye and then lightly filling in that gap. 

For the forehead, the choice is yours - you can go for a blob or you could be artistic and draw a palm tree type shape thing. 

And for the chin, my artistic and mathematical skills are failing and it just gets a blob. 

The fact that you're using a lighter concealer shade means that it will appear lighter on your face and will make it look like those features are sitting up higher in your structure. 

CONCEALER TO CONTOUR

This personally isn't something that I've ever tried before but I've seen it done and it looks good. To use concealer to contour is just like using it to highlight but in reverse. Instead of using a lighter concealer, using a darker one and I'm talking several shades darker, possibly the darkest one that is available. If you are using it to contour, try to get a shade that is cool toned or neutral. If you use one that is too warm, it may look too much once it's blended out. It would look like a nice bronzer but that's not the look that you want to create. 

To contour, draw a thin line just a smidge underneath where your cheekbone is its most prominent at an angle from the top of your ear to the corner of your mouth. Don't go all the way down, just about a third to half way - basically to where your eye begins depending on your face shape. Then a line at your hair line on your forehead and under your jaw. Remember, thin lines are better, you can always add more. You can't take away a Snickers bar kind of line. Then blend in place.

CONCEALER TO CARVE

This technique tends to be used to carve out the eyebrows. Taking a little bit of concealer onto a detail brush, use it to clean up any edges of the eyebrow, underneath or above to really carve it and accentuate the arch or tail. Then lightly blend out. Simple. You can do the same thing for your lips and cleaning up the edges.

Also, if you're doing a more intricate type of look on your face or yours eyes, concealer on a very precise brush can really add to or clean up a look. For example, using a liquid concealer on a MAC 210 brush and using it to create a line in a cut crease look. Another idea is using concealer on a liner brush and cleaning up body paint lines on your face. I used this techniques in my Jaylah from Star Trek: Beyond inspired makeup tutorial which you can see here. Concealer is amazing for correcting at little mistakes or at adding to a look. 

CONCEALER TO CORRECT

This is quite possibly my favourite use for concealers, in particular, colour-correctly concealers. I personally love the Catrice All-Round Concealer palette. It has five cream concealers in differen shades; green, salmon-red and three concealers for different skin tones (or as contour colours for fairer skin tones). MUA (Make Up Academy) also have a line of great affordable colour correcting concealers.

Colour-correcting is about neutralising the darker or unwanted colours of the skin. Green is to cancel out redness and the salmon-red covers dark circles. Like with cream concealers, I use  my fingers to apply these. I place the red under my eyes and then the green around my nose where I have some redness and onto spots that peek up every now and then. The salmon one is great for neutralising the darkness of one's eyebrows when doing more SFX orientated makeup looks. Remember that.

Some people prefer to colour correct before they apply foundation but I tend to do it afterwards before I highlight and set everything. I do that because then I can see what the foundation needs help with. Foundation isn't to conceal but it evens out the skintone. After foundation, I can see what redness and darkness remains.

I then apply a liquid concealer over the top once it's had a chance to settle (I fill in my brows during that time) and blend them both into place. 

FOR THE BEST RESULTS

There are many ways to blend out concealer and they largely depend on the consistency or the task of the concealer. I like to blend out cream concealing concealers with my fingers and blend out liquid concealers with a Beauty Blender sponge or a brush.

With regards to brushes, I personally love to use the Real Techniques Setting Brush for liquid concealers under the eyes. It's small and soft enough to blend out such a sensitive area. For blending out highlighting concealer, I love to use the denser end of my No7 Contour & Highlight Brush. I know it's not its use but beauty has no rules when it comes to the brushes. It's the perfect size for blending out the under eye highlight.

With both brushes, the best results come when you using patting motions to blend out any concealer. Swiping motions move the concealer around so that it's not where you want it to be or have the coverage that you want.

I have recently become addicted to the Beauty Blender. I'm on the verge of preferring this tool to blend out colour-correcting and highlighting concealers together. I tap the sponge over the area and the products blend out beautifully. Unlike with brushes, this sponge soaks up excess product so that there isn't too much on the face and reduces the risk of everything looking cakey.

Those are just a handful of the concealers available in the beauty market and they happen to be my favourites. They work for me and my skin tone which is very fair as you can see. What concealers are your favourites?

If you want a list of other concealers that are on the market and are great for your trouble areas and you're looking for a good concealer, check out this list here. I hope that you found this post helpful.