Today we're going to talk about how to wax an upper lip and demonstrate that for you.
And to do that, you're going to need some specific tools. The tools that I use are a
wooden spatula. I use a soft brush for application of a dusting powder, a piece of fabric specifically
used for waxing. Again, if you don't have exactly the things that we use in the beauty,
from the beauty supply store, you can substitute a couple things. You can use craft sticks
or popsicle sticks for your spatula if you're doing this at home. You can use muslin fabric
if you don't have access to a beauty supply store and you can cut those to fit the size
that you're going to need. Obviously, a makeup brush that's clean and sterile will work fine
for your dusting powder. And for dusting powder, if you don't have access to a supply store,
you can actually use baby powder. That would work as well. We're going to use the soft
wax today, so it is important that we use a dusting powder. You want to make sure that
the area is clean, free of cosmetics, and what you do is you're going to start with
applying the dusting powder to the area to be waxed. And today, we're going to put it
on the upper lip. This is to prevent the skin from sticking to the wax, so when you remove
the wax, you're not actually removing skin with it. You just want to remove hair today.
After you've prepped the skin, the next step is you're going to to take your wooden spatula,
and we're going to previously have tested this wax to make sure that you're not burning
yourself, so you're going to want to put that on the back of your hand to test it. Remove
it with a fabric strip, just like you would with waxing, but you want to do that prior
to putting it on your face, because you can give yourself a burn, if you're not, you know,
if you've got some wax that's too hot. But you're going to use a little bit of wax on
your spatula, and you're going to apply this to the upper lip area to be waxed in the direction
of the hair growth. So, you know, whoever's being waxed, you want to look at that and
examine it prior to putting it on. I took a look at Cheryl's lip here and found what
way it was actually growing, and I see that I needed to apply it in that direction. And
when you're going to apply your fabric strip over the wax, you're going to use firm, gentle
pressure, and you're going to smooth the strip of fabric onto the wax, and you want to make
sure that there's a good connection between the wax, the skin, and the wax and the fabric.
This is going to promote more of the wax and the hair coming off when you pull that strip
off. When you remove the strip, the way that you want to do this is you're going to want
to hold the skin taut, and you're going to actually pull the skin, pull the wax off of
the skin in the opposite direction that we applied the wax. What this is going to do
is going to enable you to pull the hair out from the follicle at the root, and if you
pull it out in the same direction you actually would probably be leaving the hair in, and
so you'd be a futile attempt. So we're going to go ahead and pull that off in a short,
quick stroke at about a 45-degree angle. Now, in this case we had a little bit of excess
hair, or excess wax, and what we did was we just folded our piece of cloth over, and we
went ahead and went back in and just touched it to the wax firmly and pulled it off, and
it comes right off. Now, what you want to do is then repeat that same process on the
other side of the person's lip, and you're going to again place that wax in a smooth,
fluid motion in the same direction as the hair growth. Ok. Once you have that spread
on evenly, you're going to apply your muslin cloth or your fabric for waxing that you've
picked up at the supply stock store, and you're going to smooth that on with the firm pressure
of your finger or your thumb, in the direction of the hair growth. You want to make sure
there's that good connection there. You're going to hold the skin taut, again pulling
it off in a 45-degree angle. Anything residual, you would just remove by replacing that same
strip in a clean spot on the skin. Sometimes, if you have a person who's very sensitive
and it's painful, after pulling that strip off you may want to apply light pressure with
your finger over the area that's been waxed. If you do it immediately after waxing that
skin, it will really take the sting out of it, because it is not a very comfortable procedure.
Now the next step is you're going to want to close the pores with some toner, because
after waxing, remember, you're pulling the skin, you're pulling the hair right out of
the follicle in the skin, so you're leaving a wide open gap there, and it's really not
safe for that person to go out into the environment with that pore wide open. So you really want
to close that with something botanical, something safe, not a good idea to put alcohol on it.
Rubbing alcohol is not a toner. You want to really stick to something like witch hazel
or just a good reputable toner from a botanical company. After doing that, the next process
that you're going to want to do is also you're going to want to moisturize that skin with
something very gentle. It's probably a good idea to stay away from things that have chemical
fragrance in them after a procedure like this. You want to use something very light, but
we just want to make sure that that skin, because we've made it angry, has some opportunity
to calm down and it's sometimes helpful to use a product with tea tree oil in it. That
will calm the swelling and redness. And that would be how you'd wax an upper lip.