I had a few queries regarding keeping lipstick/gloss in place stemming from my post a few days ago, and wanted to address them today. :) Unfortunately, as we transition from Young Beauties to Older Beauties, there are little telltale signs of lost youth. One of these is vertical lines above and below our lips. Dang! As someone who never smoked a cigarette in her life, and who mainly kept out of the rays of Old Sol, reading books, snacking, and playing the piano safe inside the cocoon of my house, I felt a little gypped to see these lines appearing about around my kisser several years back! Heck, hadn't I done everything possible (with the small exception of being diligent about applying moisturizer, of course) to avoid getting these little buggers in the first place? Wasn't it UNFAIR for me to be gifted with them? Ha. Ha. Ha. One of the things you learn if you are blessed enough to reach Older Age is that LIFE IS NOT FAIR, so accept it and move the hell on!!!
Ahem. On to sharing some products I have found work somewhat well to help keep the lipcolor where you put it - on your LIPS, NOT in the crevasses above and below your lips! I'll be disappointingly honest and tell you that with some lipcolors/glosses, there is NOTHING that will keep them from travelling where no gloss should go. Sad. But true. Short of erecting a permanent fence around your lips (not the most attractive option, IMO), if you are of a certain age and try to apply a creamy, gloppy color to your mouth, you are very liable to catch an accidental glimpse of yourself a short while later and want to sink into the earth right then and there, because your lips appear to have melted, or, in the alternative, been drawn on by a crazed clown. So please stay away from lipcolors touted to be 'extra creamy' and glosses in general, because pretty much ANY gloss is too thin and creamy to not make an unauthorized trip to the Death Valley area surrounding an older beauty's lipline.......that said, I will say that I (makeup junkie that I am) own some glosses, and even use them occasionally (but mostly I buy them and after one disastrous use, pass them along to one of my Still Young four daughters). One of my favorites is the Moxie gloss by Bare Minerals...or is it Bare Escentuals? I never quite know how to refer to this company, and I should, because I own (gasp) hundreds of their products.......However, if you DO dare to venture into the Gloss Zone, please only apply a small daub to the very center of your bottom lip and then blot your lips together. Any more gloss and you WILL be sorry.......
And I STILL have not gotten to the products I promised to mention, so here they are: Urban Decay makes very good lipliners. If you are an Older Beauty and do not need/use a lipliner, I kind of hate you. I know that there are some of you out there who don't have the Crevasse Problem, and would you be willing to share some of your genes with me? Dang. Too late. The majority of us need a little help keeping the lipcolor where we put it, and I have relied heavily on Urban Decay lipliners. You can pick a color that is good with the majority of your lipsticks. For me, that would be Midnight Cowboy (and some of you might even be old enough to remember the movie......does that mean that the creators of the line are actually NOT YOUNG????), a kind of neutral brownish pink. And if you prefer the 'clear' lipliner, Urban Decay offers Ozone. I will warn you that Urban Decay also makes a white eyeliner (whatever FOR?) that sometimes can be mistaken for the clear lipliner, both being housed in a white pencil. How do I know this? A while back, I bought what I thought was a new Ozone lipliner, and arrived home to find I was now the proud owner of WHITE EYELINER!!@#$%^%$$#@!!! Ulta is a wonderful place, though, and happily exchanged my stupidly purchased white eyeliner for the product I INTENDED to purchase. :)
I have also been liking the Mary Kay lipliners recently, and, again, my perfect shade is a pinkybrowny neutral called Neutral. ;) Other lipliners I have known and loved include the now unavailable Bare Escentuals lipliner; Aveda lipliner; Cargo lipliner; and Mally lipliners (my friend Cece shared that Mally makes a good colorless lipliner, which I've not yet tried, but I will take her word on that!). Basically, I believe that I've purchased nearly every lipliner ever offered in any cosmetics line......some that I recall NOT liking (either due to color selection or formula) are Smashbox, Lancome, and Hourglass. I think it was the Hourglass one that was VERY expensive and touted by a Sephora employee to become waterproof that 'bled' all over the place. Horrors! Creating the very problem it was supposed to solve!
While a good lipliner will go pretty far in helping your lipcolor stay in place, there are additional steps that can be taken to help keep the color where you put it. I was recently talked into purchasing some Lancome eyeshadow base (Nude) to use on my lips. The Ulta employee told me that she'd never found a LIP base that worked the way it was supposed to, but that the Lancome eyeshadow base worked very well. I'm just giving it a try now, and hopefully in a future post will have a good report for you. I have used the Laura Geller Lip Spackle in the past to somewhat good effect, but no longer own any. I will mention that if you choose to go the lip primer route, make sure that you apply it with a light hand, and apply it not only to your entire lip, but also blending it a bit above and below the lipline. Otherwise it won't hold a thing. I've considered doing a YouTube video to show how these things are applied, but my vanity precludes me from showing my unmadeup face to anyone but the immediate family, and even they rarely see it, as I stay up later and get up earlier than anyone else in the household! ;) A few of my favorite (and well-used) products below:
From top to bottom: Mary Kay lipliner in Neutral; Urban Decay lipliner in Ozone, and Urban Decay lipliner in Midnight Cowboy.
Also, the Lancome Eyeshadow Base:
Yikes, that photo looks very odd. Hope it doesn't give you vertigo like it's giving me.......
Finally, I'd like to share a lipcolor I've recently been wearing a lot - it's the Loud and Clear Lip Sheer from Bare Minerals in Tangerine Trance: (Sorry for the blurriness - I used the 'macro' setting on my camera, but I guess it wasn't all that successful!)
And here it is swatched on my wrinkly wrist:
It actually looks more sheer on my wrist than it does on my mouth....Oh, wait, I snapped a picture of my makeup job this morning, hoping that it looked somewhat decent in the picture. I often feel that my face looks okay IRL, but when I try to take a picture, HUGE disappointment....is it just the camera?
Here I am this morning, wearing the aforementioned Loud & Clear lipcolor in Tangerine Trance; along with my Mary Kay lipliner in Neutral; some Bare Minerals blush in Confidence; Smashbox Brow Tech in Taupe; some Urban Decay brown shadow from the small Naked Palette (a Christmas gift from my fellow makeupaholic youngest daughter Kelly); and some Bare Minerals Lengthen and Curl mascara. I am loving the Loud & Clear for its very sheer and pretty color. At this point, it is only available in three colors....this Tangerine shade, and two others, one of which is a pink that might work for those of you with cool toned complexions. The colors look kind of scary 'in the tube', but, at least in the case of the Tangerine, go on to be very wearable and soft looking! Just perfect for an Old Broad! ;) Oh, I forgot to mention that I am also wearing some Laura Geller concealer on the dark undereye circles and the dark inner eye corner circles. That is probably one of the best ways to erase the years from the face - getting rid of the darkness around the eyes. A MOST necessary piece in the makeup arsenal, girls!
Till next time! <3
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