Looking Good Despite Fatigue

Fatigued? Lets try to look bright eyed...

We all have days where we wake up and have no desire to get out of bed. When you have chronic pain, this desire might be an actual lack of ability to actually get out of bed. I have so many days like this, but when I have to get to work despite my pain and fatigue I have a set of things that I do to make myself look presentable and awake instead of haggard and ill. One of the biggest things you can do is reduce and eliminate under eye circles... So lets get to it!  

First, there are many contributing factors to under eye circles and it is important to understand why we have them in the first place. One of them is of course lack of sleep and fatigue. This cannot always be remedied, but you should do your best to try to get at least 8 hours of sleep a night. My difficulty with this is even if I have 8 hours scheduled for sleep and am trying sleep during that time, I still end up feeling tired because my pain level does not always allow for deep sleep. Other contributors to under eye circles include stuffy sinuses, seasonal allergies, sinus infections, and colds as these cause extra build up of fluid in your nasal passages causing water to build up under your eyes. Another factor is of course heredity. If you happen to have thinner skin under your eyes, or have very transparent skin, you will have darker circles than others. Also, your diet and how you sleep can contribute to excess darkness. If you eat a very salty meal for dinner time, that will cause excess fluid to build up in your body in general until you can process out the extra salt. Sleeping on your side or stomach can cause fluid to pool more readily under your eyes and in your face.

Now that we know the contributing factors, you can do things to prevent under eye circles in the first place. Despite working on these things, when fatigued, those bags are going to be there anyway, so let try to get rid of them and cover them up.

First, putting something cool on your under eye area is very helpful to dilate your blood vessels and reduce puffiness. Bubz from BubzBeauty on YouTube has a great way of doing this. She takes a makeup remover cloth and after she has used it washes it out and sticks it in the freezer overnight. In the morning it is ready to go. Just warm part of it with your fingers and press to your under eye area. This feels so good and really helps reduce puffiness.  

Then, its time for eye cream. If you really like the cooling affect of the cloth, another trick is to stick your eye cream in your refrigerator overnight and this will be cool when you apply it to your eyes also. Eye cream is helpful because it will make sure that the concealers we put under our eyes go on smooth and don't end up cakey.

Next, we will put a color corrector under the eye and on the eye lid. I really like Erase Paste by Benefit for this purpose and use it everyday. There are other color corrector's that are good for this such as Bobbi Brown Corrector, but any orange toned cream that you like will combat the blue tones and will cover the under eye area well. You only need a very small amount of your corrector because it goes a long way.

After the corrector, put some concealer under your eye area. Again, just a little bit should be all you need to finish covering your circles ups.  

Now you can conceal any other spots you need to and put on your foundation. If your under eye area tends to crease (as mine does), then set it with a very small amount of power and check it a few hours into your day to see if it needs to be blended in again. I do this when I set my foundation with powder.

A few other makeup tricks to make your eyes look more awake include lining your water line with a nude or light colored pencil (I use Rimmel Scandal Eyes Waterproof Kohl Eyeliner in Nude 005). On days I am especially tired, I do this even if I don't line the rest of my eyes. Then I curl my lashes and add mascara which also makes me look more awake. If I am looking a bit pale or my complexion looks ashy I add some blusher to get some more life into my face.

What do you do on those days that you feel especially tired and still have to leave the house? What are your tricks for looking awake?