Perfect Valentine Lips!

by Ann

Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s the perfect day to be talking about lips and kisses!

Finding the right shade of lipstick can be a difficult task.  I’ve shopped with my mom many, many times as she has tried to find that shade that meets all of her criteria.  If you’ve bought one that ended up being too dark, and then another that isn’t dark enough, mixing the two colors together can be the answer.  This solution also works great if you’re like me and limit your department store cosmetic purchases to when a “free gift” promotion is on which usually includes a lipstick.  The problem is that you get whatever shade the gift includes.  The cosmetic companies have wizened up in the last couple of years and have at least given customers a warm or cool choice, but even then it could be too light or too dark for your taste.

So, here’s what I do – Once empty I save the little lidded jars that also come with the free cosmetic gifts, usually containing eye cream.  Whenever I find a lipstick that has a pink shade (I don’t do well with anything with an orange tint) that isn’t “quite right” I save it for a custom blend.  When I have a couple of darks and lights I break the lipstick part off into the container and mix them up using the wand of a lip gloss (which was probably also part of a free gift) to come up with the perfect color.

For the pics for this post I rummaged through my miscellaneous free gift lipstick leftovers and found more dark than light.  Pictured above is a new version of each.  I often don’t add product to the color pot until the lipstick is down to the end, or it broke due to my haphazard use.  It is amazing how much product remains inside the base of the lipstick – I’ve tried to illustrate the digging out process in the picture below.

Your custom blend of lipstick can be applied as is with a lip brush or the wand of a lip gloss, but I have a couple of more steps to the perfect lips, if you want them to last throughout most of the day.  In the morning I always start with a lip liner followed by Revlon’s Just Bitten lipstain, and finally my custom blend applied with a lip brush.

My custom blend of the "perfect pink" lipstick!

I’m sure I got onto the Revlon Just Bitten lipstain by getting it free or almost free with a CVS promotion.  I like it enough to have bought it again.  One end like a felt tip pen is what is used to dye the lips.  The other end has what Revlon calls a balm to be put on after the stain, but my process doesn’t include using that end, which I find similar to Chapstick’s consistency.  The liner/stain/custom blend application keeps my lips looking bright until after lunch, after which I just use an acceptable color out of the tube for reapplication until the next day.

As for Valentine kisses, my hubby runs the other way if I try to kiss him with lipstick on so, maybe I won’t use much lipstick at all today…

I hope that yours is or has been a sweet, happy day!