How to do DIY Lip Transfers

Fired up, I was, by Aisling's post last week on Jessie J and her fabillis lip transfers. I'd still got some temporary tattoos floating about the flat from the last time I got enthusiastic about sticking things on my skin for a short amount of time, and that got me to thinking: what if I could use some of the ones I still had lying about - but on lips?

So I decided to.

This needed some planning, though. Y'know, about five seconds worth. Clearly, a matte lipstick would be required as a base shade, because these skin tattoos need clean skin (or as near to it) to adhere to, so anything very gloopy or sticky won't work. Lancome's Colour Fever lipstick in 151 - or Aaron's Red, as it's also known - was what I decided on. This doesn't look much more than an ordinary red in the bullet but on the lips, weee-oowww. It's just the most beautiful almost-neon shade. I love it.

Nicely matte too, so it'd definitely suffice.  On it went, then I got busy with my scissors and cut out a shape from one of my transfer sheets to stick to my lips. Initially I tried one of the gold chains in the bigger transfer sheet in the top pic but there wasn't enough of a contrast, so you couldn't see it. Experiment failed, but I tried again, this time with a black and white one.

Tattoo stuck to lips, waiting to transfer in all its glory

That worked a bit better.

I wouldn't say this effort looks spectacular, but equally, use on the lips were not what these particular transfers were designed for and they're not shaped for the lip contour either. They have a slightly plasticised finish which almost immediately began to crack and peel, another drawback. Lips are mobile - anything that goes on them moves and disappears after a while - if you're a lipstick or gloss fan, you'll know that anyway.

So, the upshot of this is that yeah, it's gonna be perfectly possible to apply temporary stuff to lips, it's a bit of fun and depending on the patterns and shapes you can get, it could look pretty damn deadly too. Imagine a matte red pout with a small black or white heart? Mmm, that's the sort of transfer I can get behind, oh yes.

What do you think? Has my DIYsperiment totally turned you off the idea or are you keen to try a little pout-adornment for yourself?