Concealers July 14, 2008
I recently purchased a fabulous concealer from Minifies.co.nz. I haven’t had the time to do a proper comparison of this product with other concealers, but my feeling is this one’s a winner.
I buy concealing products for just one reason - dark circles under the eyes. They are impossible to get rid of, though I’ve spent years trying. And no concealing product will erase them completely, even for a short time. Below is pictured the raft of concealers I currently have for my dark-circles - but over the years I have owned many more.
The minifies’ product is the Ben Nye Blue Corrector (pictured top right, in round pottle). It’s peach-based which counteracts blue-tinged dark circles. It works really well. And I wonder why other cosmetic companies don’t recommend peach for dark circles. The Lancome palette pro compact pictured recommends yellow as a base for dark circles. The YSL touche eclat uses ‘light reflecting technology’. The Estee Lauder cream concealer to the left is a white-mauve recommended by a stranger at the EL counter. And the EL cream concealer on the right is a shade lighter than my skin tone - which is often recommended by cosmetic counter brands.
Here they are on my hand:
From left to right - YSL touche eclat, Ben Nye blue corrector, Estee Lauder in ‘barely-mauve’, Estee Lauder in ‘light’, Lancome yellow base.
The Ben Nye is one of the best concealer of dark circles I’ve used. It’s really hard to say “the best” until I do a proper comparison where I photograph my eyes with all my products. Which is what I’ll do real soon. In the meantime, if you’ve any experience with concealers please comment - maybe there’s a perfect product out there you know of.
The big revelation for me was when I got the colour picked by a MAC consultant, rather than doing it myself.
Previously I’d picked an under-eye concealer to match the colour of skin under my eyes, not realising that the skin under my eyes was paler than the skin on the rest of my face (iron deficency?!). The MAC guy gave me a slightly darker tone which not only helped with the darkness in the inner corners of my eyes (I don’t get dark circles under my eyes), but it also lifted the general look of my eye area. Cool.
I know there’s also a risk in using an illuminator (like Touche Eclat) if it’s not matched to your skin tone - it can end up highlighting and emphasising the dark circles, making it look worse.
(Why does this WP theme treat paragraphs in comments as line-breaks?)
The best concealer I have found for under the eye is Jane Iredale Active light conceler.It works the same as YSL touche eclat conceler in that it uses light reflecting technology and gives great results but costs about half the price of what the YSl one does!