Professional Make-up Artists go through so many different beauty products yearly. Most of us create custom lip colors for our clients. You can use lipstick, liquid lipstick, lip glosses, loose pigments and mixing mediums. By doing this we don’t waste nearly empty lip products.

To create a quick color you can basically mix lipgloss and lipstick together in different variations. If you want to keep this color for future use, using a lipgloss will not stay preserved for long. However if your mixing different lipsticks together you can store the rest in a empty lip palette available just about anywhere. You can add a clear gloss over the lips for the shine you desire after. If you expect this to keep longer than two weeks you must use a preserver.

If you just want to experiment with color just for that day, a mixing palette is often used by the professionals.

The Tools

- Makeup Spatulas
- Mixing Palette or for keeping color for future use, an empty lip palette
- Q-Tips
- Alcohol
- Mixing Medium (pre-made or naturally use water and glycerin) or clear balm for something sheer.
- Lipsticks, lipgloss or mineral pigments safe on the lips

How to:

First you must sanitize the palette you plan to mix colors together in by using some alcohol. Next decide what products you want to use, what colors you would like to see together. The principles of the color wheel should be a starting point. Primary colors like yellow, blue, red, will be good start.

Quick Mix – Lip Gloss
Start slow, by using one to two parts of each product to see what the results are. Some glosses are hard to extract from its packaging, my tip is to sanitize a broken off end of a q-tip and get the gloss out that way. Mix the lipgloss products using a clean makeup spatula.

Lip Mix Mac Pro
These lip products were especially designed to mix together. They come in many different finishes, textures and basic to primary colors. Lip Mix is only available at the Mac Pro. If you’re a makeup artist and haven’t used this before it’s a great product for mixing your own lipsticks.

Lip Tar Mix - OCC
OCC makes an amazing product called Lip Tar. It is part lipstick and gloss all in one mixable product. These are amazing alone and really fun to mix up together Try them out for yourself. You can purchase them here: www.occmakeup.com

Lip Palette Mix - Yaby Cosmetics
Yaby Cosmetics is a trusted professional line of cosmetics. The refillable lipsticks are creamy and smooth in texture, which is perfect for mixing up a new shade.

Recycle Mix
Hey girls, get out your nearly empty lipstick tubes and create a custom shade.
Sanitize your spatula, lipsticks and mixing palettes with alcohol.
Using your spatula remove a small amount of each color you choose to mix together. Remember that in the basic principles of color theory, black and white are not colors. White is considered a tint, which will add lightness. Black is a shade, which reduces light. The use of dark colors against light ones will have the similar effects, depending the amount used and the tones of each lipstick.

Loose Mix
Mineral Pigments that are safe on the lips are so much fun to mix, because variations of colors are endless. As always, sanitize your tools. Create your mixing medium by using one and half parts of water and two- three parts glycerin. When the texture is just right, then start slowly adding pigments into the mix. The more mixing medium you have, the more pigment you must use for the color to potent enough.

Remember the light and dark principles of tints and shades. Here’s a link to get a better understanding of how colors are created.

http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html

The key is to have fun, be creative, and make something of your own.