feeling Lippy...

"People will stare.  Make it worth their while."  

-Harry Winston

I saw Angela today and she was looking awfully drab, so I told her she needed to do something about it.  But after looking in the mirror, I realized I looked washed out as well!  So... we decided to fix it with lipstick! Here are three different looks we made to cure winter's "washed out" curse.  Thank you to our sister Allison for helping us out on this one!

To start out, all of us used a powder foundation around the edges of our mouths.  This is really important because it's like primer for the lipstick, and lipstick will look better when it is set against a smooth, even skin color.  We brought the concealer onto our lips as well so we had a clean slate to work with. You can use any concealer or foundation you have.

Marianne had the most simple of the looks. She used a MAC lip pencil in HIP 'N' HAPPY to line the edges of her entire lip. She brought the liner towards the center (from the corners) to fill in and create dimension but left the center open. Marianne then applied a matte MAC lipstick called SNOB (see it here).  Ang and Al thought the name was very fitting... she obviously disagreed haha. To blend the lipstick and liner, she used the lip pencil again, cleaning up all of the edges.

When we showed Allison her colors she said, "WHOA! Remember that I have freckles?"  That is exactly why we chose a MAC lip pencil in REDD and LADY DANGER lipstick. Using the same technique we did with Marianne, we lined the entire lip then brought it toward the center from the corners. This not only gives your lip dimension but helps the lipstick from bleeding.  It also keeps the corners clean so you don't look like a clown! ;) We then filled the lip in with LADY DANGER (see it here) being careful not to take it out to the corner because that's when it can come out of your lip line (while you eat or talk or kiss?) and smear a.k.a. Clown. LADY DANGER is a bright orange so layering this over the REDD made a fantastic shade and looked great on her complexion. After applying the lipstick we used the lip pencil to blend and clean the edges up.

Angela's look was the most complex but our favorite! We used two lip pencils. The first was KYROLAN in K14 and lined the lips then shaded just a little bit. We then used MAC HALF-RED to shade more of the lip and create a smooth transition between liners and lip. The lipstick we used is MAKE UP FOREVER in MULIN ROUGE (see it here!). It is a deep red with a beautiful satin finish that we absolutely love! To get a clean line around the edges we used a lip brush with a little lipstick.  We went over the outer corners and edges again with HALF-RED to blend the colors more so the lips have beautiful dimension and shape.  *Notice how we used purple liners but red lipstick, don't be afraid to layer and mix colors, as long as they are close to the same family!  Creating your own lip colors is super satisfying!  **Using a lip brush is ideal for beginners because it gives you more control over your boldness and thickness of the lipstick.  It's a handy tool!

A FEW TIPS FOR BOLD LIPS:

• Make sure that you sharpen all pencils before you start this look.  It is crucial that your lines are straight and clean, and that stems from the point you are using.  The messy look definitely doesn't fly with bold lips.

• During these dry winter months make sure you are applying chap stick at night before bed.  It is also good to put it on during the day, but between eating and talking it doesn't do the job it needs to.  It's hard to keep smooth lips in the winter but that will help make a bold lip fly.

• Before we ever go public with our bold lips, we like to "blot" with a tissue to get the excess color away from the teeth.  No one wants red teeth... Yikes!

• A BOLD lip works great with minimal eye makeup, so if you're ever in a hurry, just do the lipstick thing!  It will still look like you took the time and effort to get dolled up, but in reality you took 5 minutes to conceal, pencil, and lipstick your lips!  It's a great trick!

• The key is CONFIDENCE.  Girls always say, "I could never wear that color", but the truth is, you can wear anything you want to!  As long as you put it on with the right technique and KNOW it looks good!  Take risks and ROCK THEM!

We hope you could get some ideas from this post, it was a fun one!  Thanks for reading!


~Angela, Marianne, and Allison