Get the blurred lip look with these tips
You may have noticed a refreshing new trend both on your television screen and on social media. While some women will stick to the classic and always popular look of bold, vivid lipstick and sharply lined lips for dramatic contrast, a new look is beginning to gain popularity, and it makes a refreshing change. Women are using their best lip stain products to achieve a new look that’s actually a return on an old look.
Have you ever watched the original Star Trek episodes and rubbed your eyes when the camera panned in on a beautiful woman and then went all soft and blurry? This technique is known as soft focus, and it was intended to give each woman a soft, dream-like look to indicate the way she appeared in Captain Kirk’s besotted eyes.
Now that soft look has come to our makeup techniques with the popular blurred lip stain look—often showcased as crucial part of the trendy “no-makeup” makeup look.
But how do we manage to capture this lovely, soft focus look?
Throw Away Your Lip Liner and Find Your Best Lip Stain
There are no sharp lines in the blurred lip stain look. In fact, some people call this the anti-liner look. Instead of the sharply shaped and well-defined look that lip liner gives your lips, for this look you do the opposite of defining your lip shape. Instead, you are giving your lips the soft, smudgy look of a woman who has recently come from an intense make-out session.
The best way to get this look on your own (no kissing necessary) is to start with the best lip stain you can find. Lip stains are different in formula than lipstick. A lip stain is made with rich pigments in a water, gel, or oil formula, meaning it contains some of the same ingredients found in typical lipsticks, but minus the wax base found in lipstick products. Lip stain is longer lasting than lipstick, and may last up to 18 hours. Stains come in several different application methods, including a tube with a marker-like tip and a gel with a sponge tip applicator, or liquids with a dropper.
Unlike lipstick, the best lip stain typically comes only in red, pink or peachy tones, as it’s meant to look like enhanced natural color.
Four Steps to The Perfect Blurred Lip Stain Look
- First, use a good stick concealer around the lip borders, and then blend it out with your fingers.
- Next, dot the center of your top and bottom lips with your choice of the best lip stain color for the day, typically shades of red, pink, peach, or natural nudes.
- Then, blend with your finger to the outer corners of the lips.
- Finally, add another dab to the center of your bottom lip. The idea is for the color to be most intense here, and then softly diffused to the edges.
What if You Don’t Have Lip Stain but Can’t Wait to Get This Look?
You can also get a good blurred lip stain look with your pink or red lipstick. One way to do this is to apply it with a small makeup brush. Dab your brush onto your tube-style matte lipstick and brush it onto lips beginning in the center and diffusing outward to the edges. It won’t last as long as it would with one of the best lip stain products, but you can still achieve the look.
Another way to do this is to apply your lipstick to the center of your lips and let it rest for about a minute so the pigments sink in. Then lightly blot with a tissue, blurring the lines at the perimeter of the lips. Cover with a matte lip balm.
Finally, you can dot your matte lipstick into the center of your top and bottom lip and diffuse outward with your finger. Then take a cotton ball and blur and diffuse the edges.
Matte or Gloss
While the blurred lip stain look is typically a matte style look, you can also gloss it up with a couple of licks of your favorite lip gloss.
Any of these methods will give you the same sweet and sexy look that you are seeing on your favorite celebrities, a soft, natural blurred effect that gives you an instant soft-focus look.
Watch out, Captain Kirk!
Resources— Allure, TheCut.com, Loreal
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