I don’t care whether it’s holiday, valentine’s day, or labor day- red lipstick never goes out of style! There is no better way to update your look and totally change the way your face looks than to throw on a gorgeous shade of red.

To start you will need:
*A red lipstick in a shade that’s right for you (Ask someone at the makeup counter to help you find the right shade for you, and always make sure to walk outside and check it in the daylight too!)
*Matching lipliner
*concealer, liquid foundation, or some sort of lip primer

Here I used Mac satin finish lipstick in “MAC red”  and Mac Lip pencil in “redd” with a touch of MAC Dazzleglass creme in “Do it up”, and I think it’s the perfect shade for a wide range of skin tones and to get that fresh “pin-up-y” look!

If you have chapped lips (and right now it’s the middle of a blizzard here in NYC so many of us might!) a good way to prep your lips and get rid of any flakiness is to brush them, yes brush them with a toothbrush! Not to hard but just enough to bascially exfoliate your lips.

Apply your primer/foundation/concealer. If you are putting on foundation anyways it’s easy just to cover your lips as well, and what this does is give a dry base to prevent cracking in the color

Next line your lip with a red liner to define your lips edge and also to help prevent the color from bleeding

Apply lipstick, and you can do this with a brush or from the tube. A brush will layer on the color whereas straight from the tube will go on thicker.

Blot between your lips with tissue, and run your finger between your lips like a lollipop (this takes out any lipstick that might’ve gotten on your teeth!)

I usually go back and add more color if blotting took too much off, and also a dab of gloss to the pout to accentuate

Another neat trick I picked up is to add a highlighter like Benefit’s HighBeam to the outside corner of your mouth, this emphasizes the sharp corners you’ve drawn in

Now get ready to break some hearts!