Tarte Cosmetics Shape Tape Concealer

COVERAGE: Full

FINISH: Matte

This super-hyped vegan concealer both brightens and smooths giving your eyes the appearance of being firmer, illuminated and ‘lifted’.  Ditching your dark circles is easy thanks to the insanely good pigmentation in this heralded concealer by Tarte Cosmetics.  

Shape Tape is also marketed to double up as a highlight/contour product or as a general face concealer. It doesn’t flake or crease thanks to the nourishing ingredients such as mango seed and shea butter. Once on, it does not budge due to the ingredients that give it superb adherence to the skin but to get that adherence, the formula tends to be on the drier side so I would suggest that this works best for the oilier skinned.

Two things to be aware of: many reviewers complain of the massive doe foot wand getting a bit messy and oozing product out the top when replacing or removing from the product casing but some have no issues at all. Secondly, should you be sensitive to fragrance in skincare, this has a synthetic zesty lemony fragrance which is totally unnecessary and fragrance in cosmetics can be an irritant for some. The huge applicator and the creamy, thick consistency means very little goes a very long way so apply sparingly and simply blend away with a gentle finger patting motion or with your sponge or damp beauty blender.

£16-£17 from Beauty Box or QVC

Bobbi Brown Under Eye Corrector

COVERAGE: Full

FINISH: Natural

I love a multi tasking product myself and if you’ve ever wished that your current concealer had a bit more ‘oomph’ and coverage, or if you are new to the benefits of colour correcting, give this colour correcting and perfecting ‘2 in 1’ concealer from Bobbi Brown a whirl.

It’s sweat and humidity resistant (so stays put all day), it comes in a wide range of shades with either a pink or peach correcting base depending on your undertone, it’s packed with skin treats to care for the delicate under eye area and offers miraculous creamy long-wearing coverage banishing those dark circles until cleansing time.

Purchasing a good colour corrector product to join your makeup arsenal is a must for those ‘hard to cover’ makeup days and a makeup artist’s secret weapon to turbo charge the effects of any concealer.

Under eye dark circles, for example, can be difficult to conceal with makeup. Step forward colour corrector! Prior to concealer application, if you block out those pesky shadows with colour corrector, you end up using less concealer thereby giving more of a natural makeup effect as opposed to several layers of full coverage concealer.

All those crazy palettes you see in the shops offering purple, green, red and yellow are and so on? Let me briefly explain…..

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT COLOUR CORRECTOR

A colour wheel is used to illustrate complimentary and opposing colours (see colour wheel below). Opposing colours cancel each other out by neutralising pigment. For example, you will see that red is opposite green on the colour wheel so for a makeup artist, we know to use a green colour corrector to help cancel out redness in the skin. Sallow yellowy areas under the eyes or around the nose are neutralised by a purple based colour corrector. So now you know!

Other recommended colour correctors are NYX and Charlotte Tilbury.

£20.50 from Bobbi Brown and other retailers such as John Lewis, Debenhams and Look Fantastic

Red Skin? Use Green Colour Corrector to reduce redness because Green is the opposite to red on the colour wheel and opposite colours when mixed neutralise each other