I'm trying to find a more robust appearance editor than what is offered in game. Skyrim's character appearance editor is, in my opinion, pretty weak. You don't get to alter the actual shape of any of your character's facial features (nose, eyes, etc), only getting to choose from a list of available preset shapes and them moving / scaling / coloring that preset piece.

So my question is, is it possible to load the player character into the Creation Kit, and them maybe edit their face with more power there?

You could try fiddling with the presets, but that would only take effect at either the start of the game, or using the player.enableracemenu command. But that could cause you to lose your inborn abilities (rectified by using the player.addspell (blank) command.)

I don't think its possible to use the player's ingame appearence in the editor, as the data for that is on the savegame, not in a esm or esp. May be possible with a 3rd party program, however.

That's what I was afraid of. I'm able to adjust my facial features using the character added by Dawnguard, but again your ability to craft a specific face is so limited. Would you happen to know of any 3rd party editors, specifically ones that give you greater flexibility than what the in-game editor allows?

Sorry, I don't know any 3rd party program that will do it- a quick search doesn't bring it up, either.

Your best bet would be with the player.enableracemenu and the player.addspell (hex code for your race's abilities) commands after you fiddle with one of the presets (or make your own.)

is this what you are looking for?

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/4554

Skyrim NPC editor