As much as I dislike lip balms of the Chapstick, Blistex, Carmex variety - that is how much I love lip gloss.

Lip gloss is shimmery, shiny, usually sheer and lusciously moisturizing on lips. Gloss doesn’t wear as long as lipstick usually, but if you use a lip liner and a good gloss, you should get decent wearing time. Try using a neutral lip liner all over the lips first to “set” the gloss.

One of my favorite lip glosses is Avon’s GLAZEWEAR Liquid Lip Color. It comes in a variety of long-lasting colors and moisturizes with Vitamins A, C and E.

Lip gloss is a great light-catcher and that catches eyes too. Lip gloss is absolutely the right look for the holidays, to shine as much as any of your holiday surroundings.

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Indoor living can leave skin feeling grimy and and looking dull. At the end of the day you need something to invigorate and polish skin to give you a hydrated glow.

Ocean Salt Skin Cleanser by LUSH is full of natural ingredients that scrub and exfoliate then soften and polish. Ocean salt, grapefruit, lime, coconut and avocado butter all combine to leave your skin feeling new and alive again. The ocean salt granules make a great scrub that dissolve to rehydrate skin. Use daily if you have oily skin but limit to once a week if your skin tends to be dry.

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I have to admit to never having liked Chapstick or any lip balm for that matter. I wasn’t sure why, but I always felt like it made my lips more chapped and they peeled more and not less. In fact, it seemed that if I started to use lip balm, I couldn’t stop because the problem would increase ten-fold and my lips would come off in chunks.

Just for fun I decided to look around the net and I was surprised to find so many people who had the same experience as I did. In fact, there are websites devoted to lip balm addiction. There are people out there who are unable to go from one room to the next without being assured of finding a lip balm to reapply constantly.

I discovered that some medicated lip balms have ingredients that actually exfoliate, that is, peel the lips. So these do, in fact, make the problem worse. But even lip balms that don’t contain these ingredients seem to have a hold on people who use them.

I thought then about my own use of lipstick and I do apply lipstick sometimes just because my lips are dry. However, with lipstick I don’t have the urge to constantly reapply, I can go entire days without wearing any and I don’t find my lips get dependent on it.

The majority of physicians and dermatologists state that lip balms can be psychologically addicting only, but in my limited experience, and it seems the experience of many others, lip balm is a highly addictive substance that requires constant reapplication to avoid it worsening the problem you used it to alleviate.

Holiday makeup is allowed to go where everyday makeup wouldn’t dare. Bold and demanding attention, the eyes can be laden in splashes of color and glimmer that border on theatrical. For an attention-getting holiday look, you can wear it.

A glittery holiday look is a dark eyeliner with a white, or metallic shimmer eye shadow extended up to the brow line. Laura Mercier Metallic Creme Eye Colour comes in 8 gorgeous glowing shades and is an Allure magazine Best of Beauty pick for 2006.

For eyeliner, go darker and bolder than you normally do. Define those eyes; if you ever wanted to line the whole eye including the lower lid, this is the time to do it. Extend the eyeliner and smudge a bit into the corner of the eye as well. Go ahead and wear those false eyelashes. Brush brows and use a gel color to define and set them.

Buy Laura Mercier Metallic Creme Eye Colour at our Beauty Store