So you’ve got the foundation, you’ve done your eyes, and now you just need to figure out what to do with your lips. No problem, this is the easiest step of them all! Soon you’ll be strutting down the street like a professional crossdresser :bubbles: Or at least strutting around your bedroom with a pretty face.

Ok, down to business. Your lips need 3 things. Lipstick, and . . . and . . . At a loss for the other items? That’s what I was afraid of. If you’ve ever wondered why your lipstick always looks smudged or crooked, or why it looks rough or splotchy . . . it’s because you’re missing two very important steps!

First thing’s first, keep your lips moisturized. Buy chapstick and use it. Just your everyday Blistex or Vaseline lip stuff for everyday when you’re not crossdressing. If you have dry lips, the cracked skin will catch on your lipstick and peel off chunks of color, making your lips look rough and splotchy. You may also want gloss to put on over your lipstick depending on what kind you’re using – gloss is really just chapstick for girls, keeping your lips moisturized and making them shiny. Sometimes it has a little color too, but usually not much. Not suitable for your every day stuff, or you might get some strange looks.

Ok, the second item you need is lip liner. This looks like eyeliner (and really is the same stuff, just in different colors), and is a heavier makeup than your lipstick. It will do 2 things for you – help define your lips, and prevent your lipstick from smearing. “Normally” you would pick a lip liner that matches your lipstick color, but you can get some neat effects by pairing a lighter color (ie pink with red lipstick) or a darker color (ie maroon with red lipstick). Just experiment, as long as the colors compliment eachother.

Now you’re ready to actually put your makeup on. Start with the lip liner and outline your lips. Be really careful with this step as it’s easy to make things lopsided. You want to trace the edge of where your pinkish lip color fades into your regular skin color. Err to the inside unless you have really thin lips, and make sure you have a constant and smooth stroke width. The lines for your upper lip and lower lip should meet at the corners of your mouth, but should not really be connected. And your upper lip has a little “divot” in the middle, so make sure you trace down into that. If you don’t have a divot, or have a really small one, exaggerate a little.

Ok, now get out the lipstick and fill in your outline. You don’t want to put lipstick overtop the lip liner, so stay inside the lines! I keep the point of my lipstick up because I want a fine point to trace the edge of my thinner upper lip as the wider portion of the lipstick fills in below, and then on my lower lip I don’t need fine control along the bottom edge and it just feels more comfortable. Anyway, don’t fuss about filling everything in or getting right to the edge. Just put it on inside the lip liner outline, a little heavier than you think you need to.

Now squish your lips together (with your lip muscles, not your fingers!) and move your upper and lower lips against eachother both in and out and side to side. The idea here is to spread the lipstick around evenly, so don’t go to extremes and spread it off your lips, but you can be fairly aggressive about it. I don’t know why it works, but your lips seem to naturally stop against eachother just right to spread the lipstick everywhere. If you do get a little carried away, use your fingernail to scrape away lipstick in places where you don’t want it.

Ok, last step, add some gloss. And now you’ve got crossdresser lips the gg’s can drool over