Pucker Up: Warmed-Up Fall Lips

One of my favorite things to do, beauty-wise, is to create lip combinations. I love playing with lip colors, and I love mixing and matching to find different ways to achieve traditional shades, but also discovering fun shades I haven’t tried before! You’d be amazed at just how much you can create with only a few products. You really don’t need a lip army arsenal a la Temptalia! But since I am a fervent lip product fanatic, every Tuesday, I’m going to show you different ways of layering and mixing lip products to create custom shades for every occasion.

Today, I wanted to do a twist on the dark, vampy lip that we’re seeing pop up for the fall and winter seasons. I, myself, don’t always feel comfortable in something as dark as the more traditional vampy lip (often very deep burgundy/wine). I’ve often found vampy lips to run a bit cool, which complicates things for me as a warm-toned gal. I also wanted to play with MAC Reflects Glitter to show how to incorporate it into a lip look as well.

Products Used

• Benefit No Competition Lipstick
• Givenchy Velvet Plum Gloss Interdit
• MAC Reflects Bronze Glitter

Methodology

First, apply Benefit No Competition Lipstick with a flat lip brush to create a defined pout. Whenever I use darker lipsticks, I use a lip brush (and sometimes a lip liner — definitely use one if lip products bleed on you!) to make sure I stay “inside the lines.” Brush on Givenchy Velvet Plum Gloss Interdit over the lipstick layer. With your finger (best method, to be honest!), dab on MAC Reflects Bronze Glitter onto the center of the top and bottom lips. Use your lip brush to blend the glitter into your lip color. Voila!

Change It Up

You can see how much each product can really change up the look, yeah? Using a dark, plummy gloss intensified our lipstick base color and made it much in-your-face. The addition of the Reflects Bronze Glitter added a lot of warmth and made it more of a reddish-toned color. You can always stop at just a gloss (which turned out to be a very gorgeous color–no Reflects needed!), or you could use a different shade of glitter, which would still give you the shimmering-water effect with a different tone/shade.

Oh, and p.s.? It only takes a few minutes from start to finish–really!

See the progression…