Makeup Basics for the Lips
Written for Walgreens.com
Your lips help you with some of the most important things you can do in a day: smile at a stranger, eat delicious food, and kiss someone you love. But they’re often neglected when it comes to your makeup routine. That’s why we compiled some easy tips to plump up that smile of yours and give you the perfect pout.
Prep work:
Before you even think about reaching for your tube of lipstick, pause just a moment for the most important step of all: prep work. Just like in painting, when it comes to your lips, you need to start out with a clean canvas. Your prep work begins with exfoliation. This will remove dead skin cells and flaky skin that can cause color to look blotchy and uneven. Try a bit of sugar mixed with olive oil and scrub the surface of your lips gently. Or for an even easier exfoliant, brush lips for 20 seconds with your toothbrush. Make it part of your morning routine and you’ll have perpetually soft lips. Once you’ve finished exfoliating, add moisture to your lips with Chapstick or Vaseline. This moisture will go a long ways to prevent fine lines and wrinkles around the mouth, as well as keep your lips soft and help lip products glide on smoothly. To further boost your beauty routine, make it a habit to apply moisture to your lips before you go to bed each night.
Lip Liner:
Once you’ve exfoliated and moisturized your lips, you’re ready to start adding color to your pout. Not everyone needs or wants to use lip liner, but if you’re looking to help your color last or you want to plump up thin lips, lip liner is a great product. To use, outline your lips with the liner and use a lip brush to blend the line inward. To make small lips look larger, color outside the lines of your actual lips. Just don’t go too far outside the lines, or it will be noticeable. For color that will last for hours, fill in the entirety of your lips with the lip liner.
Lipstick:
Once you’ve applied lip liner, it’s time to apply lipstick. Make one or two swipes of color against your upper and lower lips, then press lips together to smooth out the effect. Some people prefer to use lipstick brushes for a more controlled application. Look in the mirror to make sure you filled in all of the lip area you want covered. Then, blot with a tissue to remove excess color that will inevitably make its way to your coffee cup.
Gloss:
For a bit of evening glamour and shine, try adding some gloss on top of your lip liner and lipstick. Apply it to the center of your lips so it doesn’t radiate out towards the rest of your makeup.
You’re finished! With the right amount of color on your amazingly smooth lips, you should have the perfect pucker. And that’s nothing to pout about.