Bold lipstick is a red carpet (and – for many of us – a daily life) staple, but it can be tricky to wear in winter, given the weather-beating our mouths take.
Forgo prepping your pout with a moisturising balm and your lipstick can cake over your skin's dry patches while drawing attention to them, but apply too much salve and your lippy will slip and slide all over the place.
Well, enter Hollywood make-up artist Jillian Dempsey's insider trick, which helps you strike the perfect balance.
The pro loves to apply plenty of lip balm (something thick and emollient, such as Rosebud Salve) before using a blotting paper to seal and prep the lips.
'When I am working on an actress and place a lip balm on first for prep (before I apply the lip) I always use a blotting paper to take off any excess balm, so that it's a clean lip to paint the colour on,' Dempsey tells us.
She did just this on Emilia Clarke before the Golden Globes earlier this week, pre-application of a show-stopping fuchsia pink lipstick on the actress (which photographed beautifully, of course).
We're never without blotting papers, thanks to their shiny skin-slaying benefits, but now we'll put them to use on our lips, too. Take that, chaps.
