How to conquer the morning after a party

Admit it. You had one too many drinks last night and now you're standing in front of a mirror with a concealer in your hand trying to hide those dark rings under your eyes. Good plan. At least after you've tried these. Or try these tips after a bad night! The below tips will bolster your concealer so you can look radiant throughout the day. Not only today, but tomorrow too. And the day after. For ever actually.

If you use foundation, apply first and then your concealer. The result is nicer and you can also perfectly measure out how much to use, and where the cover is needed.

The best way to apply concealer is not to dot it here and there or even worse: rubbing streaks around. The way to do it is to create a triangle under your eye until the tips of your cheeks. This way it covers more than just the dark rings, and gives a light lift to the face. Nice bonus.

If you don't have an eyeshadow primer at hand, use concealer as the base for your eyeshadow. Light coloured eyeshadow hides puffy eyes and that's what you're looking for. What you don't want is your eyeshadow to gather in the creases on your eyelid. The concealer will help the eyeshadow to last longer and the colour to look better.

Suffering from red skin? Use a green coloured concealer to brighten the skin tone and then use a concealer in your regular colour. This will bring a bit of balance to the skin tone.

Go for the green concealer if you have a pimple. Apply a drop of green concealer around the pimple (not on it!) and then cover the spot with your normal concealer. Apply a transparent powder afterwards and you'll hardly notice it anymore.

Not fan of concealer? You can also put foundation to good use, only don't use too much. Because foundation is fluid, you often think you need more than you do. Use a dot, wait till its absorbed and then start layering. Otherwise you'll look like you've got a dot-to-dot book under your eyes.

Use a concealer that is lighter than your skin tone and apply it in three places. The V under your eyes, on your eyelid and just under your eyebrow arch. Then blend it out a little. The lighter colour gives you a healthy glow.

Blend concealer with your ring finger. This is the weakest finger and will give the best result. Believe me, keep your pointer finger out of the way, or you'll get streaks.

Learn about what the different colour concealers can do for you. Peach corrects dark and blue rings, green hides red patches and yellow corrects almost all uneven skin tones.

You can hide puffy eyes with a little eye cream, a highlighter and a concealer. Mix all products on your hand and then apply under your eyes, and also under your eyebrow. This is often a forgotten spot. If you only correct underneath, you'll see it on top. Applying concealer under your brow gives a light lifting effect. The light colour lifts everything up a bit.

After you've applied concealer, take a soft tissue to it. This stops the concealer from sitting in creases, which will make you look ten years older.

Gone over the lines with your eyeliner? You could try rubbing, but you run the risk of streaks and making it more visible. Correct it with concealer.

Lipstick looks and lasts longer if you first apply concealer around the mouth. This prevents lipstick from running and it can never accidentally end up around the mouth. It also accentuates the shape of the lips. Concealer also works well as a base for lipstick.

Do you want to make your lips look bigger? First apply concealer to the middle part of your lips. Just like the imprint when you kiss someone. Then rub it out with your fingers and apply your lipstick. Seriously, it will give you a lovely soft look and your lips will appear larger.

Concealers also work well to give contour accents or highlights. You use two shades darker than your skin colour for shaping and two shades lighter for highlighting. If you use a concealer pen, you'll have far more control over the positioning and shaping will be much easier. Draw the light colours on the zones that you want to highlight and use the dark colours to create shadows. Blend well with a good brush, to hide the stripes.