Bad Girl Boot Camp

Have a little too much fun last night? Brew yourself some coffee, pop a couple ibuprofen, and follow these quick concealer tips to transform your late-night cocktail hangover into a beautiful brunch face.

The Tools:

A concealer brush will pick up the pigment and place it exactly where you need it unlike your fingers, which absorb product.

Make sure you’ve got the right shade of concealer. The reverse-raccoon look does no one any favors. A yellow-based tone that is one shade lighter than your foundation is a good starting place. Test concealer on the blue veiny area inside of your wrist to determine the perfect opacity.

The Tricks:

Start with a clean slate: make sure you remove every trace of the smoky eye that looked so cute last night. Your dark circles don’t need any extra help!

Apply your foundation, tinted moisturizer or base. Concealer should be secondary, because you’ll be spot-concealing, and you don’t want to brush away your careful handiwork.

When it comes to concealer, we love YSL Touche Eclat for its light texture and brightening effect. Whichever you choose, the placement for this hangover cure is the same: With your concealer brush, draw a triangle from the inner corner of the eye (the darkest spot on the face) straight down to the outer corner of your nose (where most of us have some redness) and up to the middle of the undereye area, then fill in.

Avoid taking your concealer all the way to the outer corner of the eyes, as smile lines can make a too-heavy formula look cakey (and most of the discoloration doesn’t extend that far, anyway). This is called The Triangle of Light: it’s where you want the light to hit your face to deflect any darkness. Now blend!

If undereye puffiness is your issue, grab a thin concealer pencil in your shade and drag across the undereye right in that dark line of demarcation at the bottom of your puffiness. This will give the illusion of bringing that area forward. You can also recede the puffy part by softly shading under the lower lashline with a light taupe. Bronzer also works well for this.

Boom! No more zombie-face.