Beauty Reporter: Beauty 101 Card.(lip care)

Beauty Reporter: Beauty 101 Card

Cheat Sheet

1 Gently massage a damp, soft-bristle toothbrush or washcloth over the lips to smooth away rough spots (gloss will stick to dead skin, magnifying it). When the surface is smooth, dry the lips with a clean towel. Always apply a rich lip balm or moisturizer before bed if your lips tend to become chapped. 2 Choose a rosy neutral pencil that mimics your natural lip tone. Outline the mouth, staying just within the borders, before coloring in the remainder. 3 Lip liner should never be visible beneath your gloss -- soften any obvious pencil marks with a fingertip or Q-tip. To create a base for the lip gloss to adhere to, rub a clear waxy lip balm or anti-feathering product on top (these have water-resistant properties that make them long-lasting). 4 Pucker your lips as if giving a kiss. Then spread gloss from the middle of the mouth to its perimeter by lightly patting with a fingertip or wand. Avoid going all the way to the rim, where color bleeds more easily. 5 To deepen the shade, and eke out a little more wear time, brush on another thin coat of gloss. Be sure to wipe away any excess from around the mouth with a fingertip or Q-tip.

Beauty Reporter: Beauty 101 Card

Toolbox

* A cotton washcloth or a soft toothbrush are standard lip-buffing tools. A nonabrasive scrub also works: Smashbox Emulsion Lip Exfoliant (1) contains fine sugar granules to remove dead skin without irritation. Use once or twice a week (smashbox.com). * At night, try a rich moisturizer for chapped lips. Aquaphor Healing Ointment (2) hydrates and soothes with petrolatum, panthenol, and glycerin; Kiehl's Lip Balm #1 (3) soothes and moisturizes dry lips with ingredients such as petrolatum and sweet almond oil (Aquaphor, drugstore.com; kiehls.com). * The best lip pencil blends invisibly into your lips, rather than calling attention to itself. Low pigment levels make it nearly impossible to overdo an application of Clinique Sheer Shaper for Lips in Sheer Rose (4). For extra conditioning, M.A.C. Lip Pencil in Dervish (5) packs vitamin E into its long-lasting formula (clinique.com; maccosmetics.com). * There are thousands of lip balms -- choose one that gratifies your senses as it works: Burt's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm (6) contains cooling peppermint oil; Pookie Lipbalm in Vanilla (7) smells good enough to eat. Or try an anti-feathering product, like Estee Lauder Prime Fx Lip primer, to fill in fine lines temporarily (burtsbees.com; pookiestore.com; esteelauder.com).

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