Tuesday's Tip

As we approach winter, keeping chapped lips at bay can be difficult. Adding lipstick or gloss to a poor pucker will only make it worse. Here are some quick tips and tricks to keep those lips mistletoe ready!

• Look for lip balms or glosses with ingredients like Shea butter and beeswax, both of which coat your lips with a layer that helps reduce water loss and chap. Natural waxes like beeswax, candelilla, and carnauba add shine and slip and are plant-derived. Every gloss and balm contains some form of them and they’re good protectors. Besides waxes, check for oils. Some people have a reaction to petroleum oil—it’s not necessarily the best thing—but it’s one of those products that has been used for centuries and a lot of lip glosses contain it. Olive oil, vegetable oil, cocoa butter, lanolin—all of those sorts of oils are also good in small quantities. Vitamin E and different nutrients are beneficial too, but waxes and oils are the primary things to keep in mind. Try The Body Shop Tantalizing Lip Butter.
  
• Steer clear of lip products with alcohol because of the drying effect. Some matte lipsticks contain it—when you put them on it’s not as though your lips will be immediately dry and puckered-up, but over time the alcohol is going to dry out your skin. Avoid products that have any kind of menthol in them. Many medicated lip balms contain menthol or camphor. A lot of women think using medicated lip balm is the only way to go during the winter months, but while menthol and camphor might feel good at first, they create an addiction for your lips by drying them out even more, at which point you feel you have to apply even more product to reduce the dryness. It’s like a dry lip self-fulfilling prophecy.
  
• For quick fixes for pesky flakes on your pucker remember Gina's tip. When you’re washing your face, add 1/2 tsp. granulated sugar to one drop of honey and rub gently over the lip area. Sugar is a natural ingredient that won’t dry out your skin like salt will, and it’s a great exfoliator. It works better than a toothbrush—brushing your lips with toothpaste, a mint-containing product, can irritate and burn.

Pucker up, baby!

With Love From the West Coast,

xoxo