How to apply red lipstick on aging lips. Use a thin sharpened lip pencil to line lips, apply lipstick with a brush, blend, blot, balm
This is a lipstick makeup trick for wearing a brighter lipstick color while still minimizing attention drawn to your vertical lip wrinkles. Older women who wear red lipstick tend to make themselves look older than their actual years by accident. The simple reason for this is that they are applying red lipstick as though they are decades younger. Let me say the old school technique does not work well on an older woman who suffers from thinner lips and vertical lip wrinkles from aging. In this beauty tip article I am going to suggest an abbreviated lipstick application technique which should brighten up your lips without making you look older than your age.
Lipstick how to guides are going to tell you to clean your lips, line your lips in red, fill in the lips with the same red liner, apply lipstick from the tube without rubbing your lips together, blot once and finish with a long lasting lip gloss. This classic red lipstick application is great for our grand-daughters but not for us women over fifty. Trust me such a lipstick application is going to look way too clown-like red on an older woman’s face.
Generally speaking, a more natural lip color is best for a mature face. Because the lips are lower down on the face, applying strong color to them tends to draw eye-ward attention downward. Too much color on the lips draws attention to lip wrinkles, sagging jowls and an aging chin and neck. More often than not you want your eyes to stand out on your face the most as this draws eye attention upward which gives a free face lift effect. That being said, some women are just too plain and washed out looking without at least some color being added to the lips.
If nude shade lipstick is leaving you too unmade up looking and haggard, you might want to add a little bit of natural looking color to your lips. A hint of red can actually look nice on an older woman but it has to be a natural looking stain effect rather than a goopy red with gloss application. A tiny hint of red can look even better than the natural plums and tacky orange toned lipstick you see on older women. Here are a few tips for getting a natural looking red tone to your lips that looks natural and gorgeous regardless of your age.
Prime your lips with makeup
You can purchase lipstick fixative which acts as a primer before putting your lipstick on. This can work wonders for women whose lipstick tends to bleed. But even a cream moisturizer applied prior to your makeup can double as a fixative. Not only that, your makeup, from moisturizer to liquid foundation to pressed powder, serves as a great lip primer so if you cover your lips with your face makeup it should not hurt anything.
Apply lip liner using a sharp lip pencil in a natural shade
The most important thing about the lip pencil is to choose a natural shade and a good quality lip liner pencil. Sometimes the totally nude colors blend into the skin too much so get a natural color is neither too light nor too dark. You want to go as light as you can but at least get some color tone on there. If a light nude lip pencil just disappears completely try something like the Mac lip liner pencil in the color Spice. You don’t want to go any darker than that though.
The most important thing about the lip liner is to use a pencil. Don’t use one of those fat pencils! And don’t use one of those twist up lipstick type pencils. Both of those are too imprecise. You want the classic thin style lip pencil. You also want a really good makeup lip pencil sharpener. A sharpened point pencil in a good natural color is going to stay put and be adherent enough to put a halt to the bleeding lipstick going out of bounds.
Depending on how pale your overall lips are, you can tap the pencil lightly around on the inner part of your lips to deposit a tad more pencil color to the lips themselves which you will blend in the next step.
Apply a hint of red lipstick using a narrow lipstick brush or your fingers
Older women tend to have thinner lips and way more wrinkles and grooves in what lips they do have. Running the fat lipstick tube across lips is fine if you are using a total nude lip color with a barely there lipstick hue. But when it comes to red lipstick, you seriously don’t want to put the fat tube to your lips. It’s best to get a lipstick brush and use the brush on the fat lipstick and then the lipstick brush on your lips.
The lipstick brush (or even your fingers) is much more precise than a fat lipstick tube and you can get a way better coverage on aging lips with all the grooves and gulches. The fat lipstick just misses too much and looks painted on instead of natural. If you have enough lip real estate, your finger works well as a lipstick applicator too. For thinner lips, definitely get a lipstick brush to apply the red.
Blend, Blend, Blend
Now what you want to avoid is a goopy application of too much red. Use the brush to apply far less red than you would with the tube and blend it nicely into the lips. You are going to feather in the lip liner with it blending everything smoothly together until you lips look like they have a natural glowing red stain to them. There should be no crème of goop and the blending should make your lips look natural and welcoming.
Rub lips together
Rub lips together if any goop remains. If the color is still too strong and obvious, now is the time to blot with tissue paper, a paper towel or lipstick blotting paper. Normally blotting is required if you are using the big lipstick tube. If you used only a small amount on the makeup brush and blended well, you won’t even need to blot. The blot should get rid of goop and take color down a notch only if you need it.
Skip the gloss
Shiny lip gloss really does not look good on older lips. The lip gloss shine tends to draw attention into the mouth and more or less showcases wrinkles! If you want to add a slight sheen to your lips try using lip balm instead of lip gloss. This will gloss the lips but have more of a matte effect that will look natural without dragging the eyes down to the mouth area.
The overall effect on your lips should be a totally natural looking red hue to the lips that brings some life to your lip area. Because it is not too strong, loud or glossy, this look should give you a youthful glow without making you look old ladylike, kooky or tacky. Vertical lip wrinkles and obvious sagging skin in the lower quadrant of the face will be minimized as well.The examples of Linda Carter and Jacqueline Bisset show brighter lipstick on them that is definitely done right on an older women. Give it a try.