Saturday, August 7, 2010

How To Get Luscious Lips With Minimal Beauty Products :)


Your lips are one of the most tell-tale parts of your body. While effective skin care can keep your lips plump, any negligence in skin care or unhealthy habits like smoking or excessive alcohol consumption can make your lips appear dry and flaky.

In fact, your lips take center stage every time you speak, eat, drink or kiss someone. Rough and dry lips are such a turn off. Fortunately, with the right skin care and make-up techniques, you can get perfect lips and a luscious kissable pout.

Here are some supple beauty tips to make your lips look healthy and beautiful:

Step 1: Soften your Lips

The first step towards achieving lush, beautiful lips is to keep them soft and supple. Here is how to do that:

Exfoliate
The skin on your lips is thinner than the skin on the rest of your body and thus is highly prone to dryness and chapping. Before you color your lips, you need to remove all the dry flaky skin. You can either rub a wet toothbrush over lips or use a lip exfoliator.

Moisturize
Before you apply lipstick or gloss, rub on a thin layer of lip balm on your lips, preferably one that contains petrolatum or mineral oil. Apply this lip balm once again before going to bed at night.

Treat the Lines on your Lips
Whenever you talk, eat or kiss someone, the muscles around your mouth are used frequently as a result of which, fine lines begin to appear along this area. However, you can prevent this by applying sunscreen on this area before you venture outside. Also, consider using a lip treatment that aims to stimulate collagen within the cells and plump up and fill out fine lines. Try Kinerase Ultimate Volume Lip Conditioner with SPF 20. It is a great lip treatment that plumps up your lips and protects and repairs the signs of aging. It leaves the lips noticeably smooth, full, glossy and youthful.

Step 2: Choose a Lip Color

Your lip color speaks volumes about your personality. Ideally, choose a color that's a couple of shades lighter or darker than your natural lip color. Remember, the color of your skin and hair effects how the shade of your lip color appears. Light colored hair can make your lip color appear brighter while darker hair can make it look darker. Here are some tips to choose the best color for your complexion:

Fair Complexion
Go for lighter shades such as pale pink, beige and light coral.

Medium Complexion
The best shades are brown-based tones of rose, darker beige and mauve.

Dark Complexion
Try shades like red, deep plum and chocolate lip color.

Also, if you want to make sure that your teeth look dazzling white, use lip colors with blue undertones such as wine, plum and rosy pink shades. And stay clear of orangey coral lip color that can make your teeth appear yellow.

Step 3: Apply Lip Color

Line your Lips
Start by outlining the edges of your mouth with a lip liner, one that closely matches your natural lip color. The color of your lip liner should never be darker than your lip color lest it shows through. Also, instead of drawing a harsh line, use short, quick strokes to gently outline your lips from the outer corner of one side of your lips to the middle. Once you hit the center of your lips, repeat the same thing from the opposite corner.

Fill in the Center
With the same lip liner, fill in the center of your mouth so that you aren't left with a ring of liner if suppose your lipstick wears off.

Color your Lips
Finally, start coloring your lips. If you are using creamy lipstick formulas, you can use them directly from the tube. In case of matte or intense colors, you need more precision application with a lip brush. For extra shine, dab on some gloss on the top.