Lip techniques and mapping
The Lips
The surface of the lip is comprised of four zones: hairy skin, Vermilion border, vermilion and oral mucosa.
Vermilion: The vermilion is commonly known as the red part of the lips.
Vermilion Border: Vermilion border is the rim of paler skin that separates the vermilion from the surrounding skin.
Oral Mucosa: The oral mucosa is the mucosa membrane lining the inside of the mouth.
Cupid bow: The cupid bow is a facial feature where the curve of the lip is said to resemble the bow of cupid.
Lip Placement
For proper lip placement draw a line from the inner rim of your client’s iris down to the outer corners of your mouth. Lip colour should not extend past this point.
Accent Lips
| Feature | Correction |
| Slanted | Raise up the lip line at the outer corners of the mouth using a lighter pigment colour and a darker shade of pigment colour in the centre of the lips. |
| Small/Thin | Draw your lip line just outside the natural vermillion border to make lips appear larger. |
| Full | Draw your lip line just inside the natural vermillion border to make lips appear smaller. |
| Uneven | Starting on the right side, at the bow, sketch the lip line to the corner of the lip, repeat for the bottom. Even up the left side with the right side of the lips. |
Use a white freshly sharpened (sanitised) eyeliner pencil to outline and agree a shape with the client along their lip line. You can use a white paste, with a small brush or a fresh concealer. All products as such must be decanted into disposable cups and applied with disposable wands/brushes to maintain hygiene. A pre-inked mapping string can also be used. Some may wish to use callipers or golden ratio callipers to measure the lips. All products should be non-toxic to the skin.
Lip guidance
Mouth shields can be used to stretch the lip tissue or create a better placement of pigment. Lips with filler will swell more than those who do not have filler in situ. You should aim to create overlapped boxes of colour, in different directions to create a full lip pigment. A lip blush will take roughly 3/4 passes.
You should never tattoo the Oral commissure – which is the area where the superior labium (upper lip) meets the inferior labium (lower lip). This triangle in the corner of the mouth is a different texture and pigments, especially carbon with small particles can easily migrate within this area. The image below shows how to map the significant areas of the lip. ONLY lip tissue (that with lip line, not necessarily only coloured tissue) should be included, not facial tissue with visible pores on.
