I caved!

I was supposed to be being good and not buying anything superfluous until December - my recent shoe escapade ended in me buying two pairs of ankle boots - one I am kind of kicking myself over. More on that another day...

For work, I've only been wearing my tinted moisturiser, unless my skin is incredibly blotchy or troublesome, which, thankfully, hasn't been that often recently. So I use my Illamasqua peach pigment to cover discolouration from acne and then top with tinted moisturiser all over my face.

cream pigment in "emerge". It's actually a tad brighter than in this photo

This hasn't been working as well as it used to. Originally I used an egg-shaped sponge to apply the pigment - it's a cream pigment - but found I was tugging the skin under my eyes too much, so switched to a concealer brush. The concealer brush irritated my eyes a little because it was prickly when I used it and would make my eyes water. So I've been using my finger.

Using the middle or index finger to cover the blemishes on my cheeks and chin is fine - there's not enough coverage for the under-eye though.

And, to be blunt, on its own it's just not enough to cover the dark patches. I'd gotten to the point where I would feel glum every time I saw myself in the mirror - I would instantly focus on my chin and the dark bags under my eyes which my eye cream is doing nothing to fix.

After being intrigued by a concealer from NARS yesterday, I decided that on my lunch break I would pop out to my local Space.NK to try it out.

And decided to buy it.

stick concealer in "caramel"

The plan is to use the peach pigment first, then layer the caramel-coloured NARS concealer on top, and finish with my tinted moisturiser.

I'm a bit concerned that the concealer may lack when it comes to applying it under the eyes - the woman in the shop said make sure to warm up the concealer before applying it under the eyes, so I might have to rub it on my hands and then use a brush to apply it. Which feels a bit time-consuming and potentially wasteful...

I'm hoping to have the time/energy to do a photo-entry of the process, but for now, it's just the shop photos...

• Emerge - peach cream pigment from Illamasqua, £17
• Caramel - concealer from NARS (bought at Space.NK), £17.50