Taking Care of Your Lips

     Hi everyone!  Today we’re talking lips; taking care of your lips is really important.  It looks really bad if you have dry, cracked lips, and it doesn’t feel so great, either!

     If your lips are dry it could mean that you’re thirsty.  Cracked, dry lips could also be a lack of iron or vitamin B from your diet.  When your lips are cracked, licking them doesn’t help, it just makes them worse.  Biting or rubbing your lips with your fingers doesn’t help either.  If you have dry skin, gently rub it off with a tooth brush or a wet wash cloth.

     Make sure that you drink plenty of water and use something moisturizing on your lips like a lip balm or petroleum jelly.  Before going to bed I almost always put on lip balm so it has a chance to sink in while I sleep. 

     If you’re dealing with dry lips, stay away from lip liners and dry lipstick.  Most lipsticks and lip liners are drying and they look bad if your lips are dry and cracked.  If you need some color, use a tinted lip balm or a lip butter.  Lip butters are a mix between a lip balm and lipstick.  They have great color, and they’re really creamy.

                                                                                   

    Maybelline Color Whisper               Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter

Exfoliation 

     There are so many different ways to exfoliate (remove dead skin from) your lips.  You can use a wet tooth brush by gently brushing your lips in a circular motion, a wet wash cloth, or you could make a sugar scrub.  There are lots of different sugar scrubs, but most of them have sugar and olive or extra virgin olive oil.  I either use a tooth brush or I use a sugar scrub and then use my tooth brush.  After exfoliating I apply a lip balm or petroleum jelly.  It leaves your lips soft and looking smooth.

     When my lips are super dry and cracked I don’t try to exfoliate them right away.  Instead I pile on some lip balm and wait to exfoliate till my lips are softer.  When you exfoliate your lips, a good time to do it is after you brush your teeth because your lips aren’t dry and it works better to exfoliate. 

Making Your Lips Bigger

     A lip plumper is used to make your lips bigger and appear fuller.  You can buy some lip glosses that plump your lips or you can make a lip plumper from cinnamon or cayenne pepper.  The cinnamon and/or cayenne pepper irritates them just slightly to temporarily swell them.  To apply it, use a little bit of petroleum jelly and cinnamon or cayenne pepper.  

 Here and here are some lip plumpers.

     Another way to make your lips appear bigger is by using lip liner.  Michelle Phan made a video on how to do it.

Lip Balms

     There are a lot of different lip balms to choose from.  They have ones to protect your lips from the sun, moisturize, all natural ones, tinted ones, and lip balms with shimmer.

Here are some popular brands:

Eos (my favorite!)

ChapStick

Baby Lips

Sugar by Fresh

Soft Lips

Or you can go with plain old petroleum jelly.  You can get little tubes for on the go, and they even have flavored ones.

What's your favorite lip balm? Let me know in the comments!
Becca xoxo