Beauty / Winter Beauty SOS: Key Ways To Boost Your Weathered Lips Back To Life

Winter Beauty SOS: Key Ways To Boost Your Weathered Lips Back To Life

Beauty Jan 28, 2020

by Meena Khan | Features Editor - Beauty

The lips are the most sensual part of the face, an area which is covered by thin skin that shrivels up at the mere hint of Arctic winds. The result is that many a pair devolve from juicy hotness in August to crushed paneer in February since the extreme cold coupled with electrical heating rob lips of their moisture and plumpness. Check out these key ways to boost your weathered lips back to life this winter!

Discipline and time management are the twin cornerstones of lip beauty. You need to practise the tips and tricks on a daily basis to ensure that your lips are always smooth and moisturized. Lip care is not a taxing activity and at most you will spend 2 minutes daily doing a light scrub and applying a moisturizing products.

EXFOLIATE — SIMPLE, EASY & BUDGET-FRIENDLY

Lip care starts at night, after you finished brushing your teeth and have removed all traces of toothpaste. IT’S essential to remove toothpaste because it dries surfaces and if it contains ingredients like cinnamon or mint, they can irritate the skin.

Here’s how I create my own lip exfoliator:

I wash my hands with soap and use the back of one as palette upon which I create a quick honey and white sugar exfoliator. I love to use honey to create a highly viscous exfoliator because in the Ayurvedic tradition it is renowned to be a nectar that possesses an antiseptic property that protects against bacteria. Honey is also recognized as a humectant which means that it attracts moisture; a desirable characteristic in a beauty product during a harsh winter. I love to use white sugar because its granules are smaller than those of brown, so it is less likely to cause deep scratches on the thin skin in the lip area.

**Key Ways To Boost Your Weathered Lips Back To Life: Honey scrub is an excellent Ayurvedic way to treat your dry pruned lips**. Photo Credit: www.darklipstips.com

I squirt a teaspoon of honey on the back of my right hand and then tap a half teaspoon of white sugar on top. I mix the ingredients using my ring finger until a thick paste is formed. I open my mouth slightly (not to eat the exfoliator) and then dab the exfoliator at the corners of the mouth, centre of the bottom lip, and the cupid’s bow. I then place my ring finger (it has the least pressure and it won’t stress the delicate skin of the lip) at a corner of the lips, and lightly massage the lips using slow and deliberate circular motions. I make sure to pass over the lips and the contour. It’s important to keep the immediate contour smooth to stave off the formation of the little lines that develop into bar codes.

After having completed one cycle of exfoliation over the course of a minute, i.e. I go over the area only once, I dab my lips with water and stop. The lips, unlike the feet and elbows, are easily frayed with excessive, quick exfoliation, so one slow cycle is just enough to remove dead skin without ruffling the surface.

Note, that a commonly touted method to exfoliate the lips is to use a baby toothbrush and a layer of petroleum jelly. I tried this method and found that the bristles irritated my lips and sometimes I would press too hard on the surface which caused tiny fissures. Also the jelly did not moisturize my lips and failed to soothe the dryness. I suffered through a pair of chaffed and irritated lips thanks to the toothbrush method so I don’t recommend it.

If your lifestyle involves a lot of travel which makes it difficult to indulge in a quick, nightly DIY scrub, then pack the Dior Lip Sugar Scrub. It is a balm infused with sugar granules that imparts a hint of colour (2 shades available).

**Key Ways To Boost Your Weathered Lips Back To Life: Lip Love. Dior Lip Sugar Scrub.** Photo Credit: www.dior.com

This product is travel friendly, and creates a beautiful base of smoothness and tint for subsequent layers of pink- or red-toned lip colour. In terms of travel, I prefer to use the stick because I like to minimise the contact between my fingers and my mouth when I am on an airplane or train, or in a hotel room. Simply put, travel environments are gross. I learned this harsh truth after having suffered the indignity of a walloping break out during my first week of vacation because my face inadvertently touched the frame of my airplane seat while I slept.

Remember to slightly open your mouth and gently trace the stick on the body, the corners and the immediate contour of the lips. All you need is one trace of the area because as with the DIY scrub, the softness of the technique makes the difference between full and frayed lips.

HOT LIPS NEED REST TOO

At night, I use a rich product such as the Burt’s Bees Overnight Intensive Lip Treatment because I will not disturb the area with eating, drinking or applying lipstick.

This colourless, 100% natural product contains glycerin, hydrogenated castor oil, jojoba esters and ceramides, all of which are recognized for hydrating, moisturizing and plumping the skin.

Again, I use my ring finger to apply a thin, even layer that fully covers the lips and the immediate contour.

If you enjoy K-beauty trends, then the Bite Beauty Agave + Intensive Lip Mask is a great product to explore.

**Key Ways To Boost Your Weathered Lips Back To Life: Lip Love. Bite Beauty Agave + Intensive Lip Mask.** Photo Credit: www.burtsbees.ca

It consists of a mix of ingredients such as agave, mangosteen extract, açai and oat flour that moisturize, soothe and protect the lips. After the nightly exfoliation, you slather on half a dime’s worth of product over the lips, including the corners and the immediate contour. The product will slowly sink into the area and when you wake up your lips will look lovely.

HOT LIPS GET READY FOR THE PUCKER

Each morning I wake up with plump, soft lips that will be the base of a great lip look for the rest of the day.

As with my nightly routine, after I brush my teeth, and remove all traces of toothpaste, I slick on a lip balm. It’s counterintuitive to start hydrating lips before breakfast because we eat it off … but the reality is that lips needs to be protected from this activity. The difference is that in the morning I use a lightweight product such as the Burt’s Bees Hydrating Lip Oil with Sweet Almond Oil. When I first heard of the product, I was wary because I imagined it would be a gloppy and would bleed into the contour.

I was wrong. This product which contains an Ayurvedic favourite, coconut oil, and other hydrating classics such as castor, sunflower and sweet almond oils, and shea butter, glides on easily and adds a delicate sheen to the lips. Even though it’s oil rich, it sinks into the lips immediately and continues to moisturize them as I sail through my morning activity.

By the time I have eaten breakfast which includes drinking lemon and water, water, espresso and mint tea, the product is imperceptible but lips remain soft.

START THE DAY WITH A KISS

Before I apply any make-up, I use a waxier tinted lip balm such as the Vasanti Best Balm Forever in Hugs (natural beige pink, 9 shades available in the collection) if I will wear a neutral lipstick.

Each tinted balm in the Best Balm Forever collection contains classic moisturizing ingredients such as shea and mango seed butters, in addition to a Canadian ingredient: Abyssinian Oil. Abyssinian Oil is a seed oil which contains erucic acid (a monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid) and is a viable alternative to argan oil.

The balm swipes on easily and leaves a trace of tint. I love how each shade suits a range of lipstick colours and creates a great, moisturized base upon which you can build pigment intensity. I noticed that as my lipstick slowly faded over the course of a day that the hint of tint created by the balm mean that my lips were never completely bare.

If you prefer a basic, colourless and effective lip balm that you can swipe on for work and play, I recommend the A-Derma Lip Stick.

**Key Ways To Boost Your Weathered Lips Back To Life: Lip Love. A-derma Lip stick.** Photo Credit: www.aderma.fr

This colourless, odourless balm contains castor oil, shea butter and avena sativa (oat) kernel flour. The third ingredient is renowned for its anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. Given that the lips are fragile, this product not only moisturizes, it also enhances the skin barrier.

PARTING LIPS

Lip care, like any other type of body care, has a few steps and requires daily discipline. In the winter, it’s important to keep the discipline so that your lips will not descend into non-stop dryness where you are preoccupied with removing bits of dead lip skin throughout the day. There are many products to moisturize the lips but depending on their texture and the time of day, you should select a different one to ensure optimal results.

Main Image Photo Credit: www.darklipstips.com

Meena Khan | Features Editor - Beauty

Author

Meena (@meenalaregina) always loved the idea of exploring the non-conventional idea of beauty. Having grown up as a pimply chubby teenager, she wanted to see the change in the world that best reflected your uniqueness as well. Her well-received collection of blogs where she tries on various beauty p...

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Winter Beauty SOS: Key Ways To Boost Your Weathered Lips Back To Life

by Meena Khan | Features Editor - Beauty

Meena Khan | Features Editor - Beauty

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