We speak, we laugh, we eat, we kiss! - So the lip zone gets a lot of action. No wonder, then, that fine lines and wrinkles - starting off with 'feathering' - develop around the lip contour not long after they show up in the eye zone, often causing women we know quite some distress (and beware, it happens earlier - much earlier - if you're a smoker. Skin really doesn't like the free radicals contained in smoke, or that puffing action).
Brush lips with a toothbrush to remove any flakiness. For perfect lip colour, you need a smooth base. To achieve this, we suggest regularly using and old, soft toothbrush - which you keep for this purpose - dabbed in a balm: make gentle circular movements to buff away flakes and really push the balm into the lip skin, because it has no natural moisturization of its own.
Give lips back their natural, rosy hue. Lips - like so much else - tend to fade as age, and naturally rosy lips are rare. (Though yours are really pale, do get your iron level checked.) So we believe in giving them some help. Outline the lips, then fill-it with sheer or semi-sheer lipstick.
Use a nude lip pencil for a crisp, youthful outline. Choose a rose-y nude, not a brown-y nude which should be as close to the natural colour of your lips as possible - and then you can draw your lip line at the outer age of your lips and actually increase the apparent size of both the top and bottom lips. (You have to make sure that the line dovetails perfectly at the corner of your lips, though.) There should, ofcourse, never be a gap between the pencil and your actual lip - but you can use the pencil to 'extend' the contour of the top and bottom lip.
Lip pencil will help prevent 'feathering' - The waxiness helps stop moisturising or lubricating ingredients in a lipstick formulation from travelling into tiny lines around the lip line (and we all have those too... )
Try lip pencil and gloss, or sheer/ semi-sheer lippy. No matt lipstick ever. Ouline lips, then fill in with pencil; top with gloss or balm (tinted if you like).
Feel free to use your daughter's lip gloss. When it comes to many make-up items, we are recommending that you 'shift' your buying habits towards make-up ranges which specifically target more mature skins. But lip gloss? You can get away with pretty much anything, so long as its not over-shimmery, or too intense in colour. (or too sticky if you have longer hair - that awful feeling of stands being glued to your lips)
Having said that, try adding just a touch of shimmer to the centre of your bottom lip - This really does help makes lips look fuller. Apply the shimmer (or gloss) with your finger, and pat it in.
Between 45 and 60, give up the statement red lipstick. Somehow on a woman at that stage in her life, a geranium or poppy or pillarbox red lipstick is all you see when you look at the face - and it doesn't look sexy. After sixty, you can take it up again - it becomes a glamourous 'statement', a bit eccentric and rather divine. Also avoid striking orange or fuchsia, and very pale lipsticks.
Tip: Remember that lip needs sun protection just as much as rest of your face. So either choose a lippy containing SPF15, or apply a separate product (balms with sun protection are great, and widely available) before your lipstick. NB: if you suffer from cold sores, and SPF lip product may help prevent them