Posts tagged DIY Beauty

Sometimes your skin can use some special attention, but you just don’t feel like putting in a lot of effort and making something fancy. Luckily I have just the thing for those kind of days. Here’s a simple recipe for a facial mask that has a great effect on your skin.

For this recipe you just need two ingredients; banana and yogurt. Both of these ingredients are miracle workers for your skin. Bananas reduces redness and swelling of inflammations on the skin surface, and are therefore great for people who have acne. But people who have normal or dry skin can benefit from using bananas too. Bananas improve skin texture and even out skin tone. Bananas also contains potassium and a number of antioxidants and minerals which ensure that the skin is naturally restored. Yogurt contains AHA’s, which exfoliate the skin and ensure that new, healthy skin that comes out gets a good pH balance. Whether your skin is dry or fat, yogurt to help restore the pH balance of your skin. The exfoliating action also ensures an ultra soft and clean skin. So as you can see, whatever kind of skin type you have, this mask will do it lots of good.

Making this mask is very simple. First you cut the banana in little pieces and put this in your blender. Next add one tablespoon of yogurt. I added two, and my mixture was way to thin.

The second step is even more simple. You just blend the mixture until there are no more chunks of banana left, and everything is nice and creamy. Now your mask is ready for use.

As you can see my mask was to thin and I made way too much, But my skin felt amazing after using this mask. You just apply it to the skin with a brush or your fingers, whichever you prefer, and leave it on for about 15 to 30 minutes. Rinse it off and feel how soft your skin is. A few extra tips: if your mask turns out to thin, try layering your mask. Apply a thin layer, wait till it dries and add another layer on top. You can repeat this as many times as you wish. If your mask is to thick, just add some more yogurt. If you always make too much mask, like me, you can store it a one or two days in the fridge. Or you can give some to your mother/sister/roommate/friend/boyfriend (why not?), and let them experience great feeling skin too.

It’s very important to cleanse your face each night. Dirt and make-up can clog up your pores, so your skin can’t breathe and repair itself. So to achieve flawless skin, you should cleanse each evening, because your skin does most of the repairing at night.

Now most of us cleanse our face with store bought product, which contain aggressive chemical ingredients. These can leave your skin feeling taut. But there is an alternative for these aggressive cleaners, which is the oil cleansing method.

Why Use the Oil Cleansing Method?

The oil cleansing method works this way: instead of washing your face with a soapy cleaning product, you use oil to clean your face. This may sound a bit weird at first. Many people will think that oil only makes your face more dirty, because it is a greasy substance, but this is not true. Oil will cleanse your face as well as any store bought cleaner, but it won’t strip the skin of its natural oil’s and it doesn’t damage the skin with chemicals.

As many people know, oil and water do not mix. When you pout water on oil, the oil will float on the water, as you see in the picture above. Now dirt and mace-up that gets on your face during the day, are also oil based substances. So they won’t mix with water. But many store bought cleaners are actually water based. So these products need to contain harsh ingredients, like sodium laureth sulfate, in order to clean. But these ingredients strip the skin of all its oils, not just the dirt and make-up, but also the skin’s own oils as well. Many people with oily skin may think “well, that’s a good thing”, but in fact, it’s not. Your skin needs these oils in order to stay healthy.

So instead of making a water based cleaner, which requires harsh chemicals, we can also use oil to cleanse our face. Like I just told you, dirt and make-up are oily substances. And water and oil doesn’t mix, but oil and oil does. So when you use oil to cleanse your face, all the dirt and make-up will mix in with these oils and your face will be super clean. But by using oil, your skin won’t dry out and get damaged by the harsh ingredients.  

People with oily skin might be a bit scared to use oil on their faces. But there’s no need for that. You don’t have to be afraid of applying oil to your face. Oil, alone, will not make your skin greasy or cause break-outs. Pimples, cysts, zits, blackheads and whiteheads, are a result of several different factors including hormones, bacteria, dead skin cells and the buildup of these factors. Your skin naturally produces oil because it needs it. By not using regular cleaners, the skin will not be stripped of its oils, so there is no use for the skin to produce extra oil. Therefore your skin may even get less oily when you use the oil cleansing method.

How to Make your Personal Oil Blend

To cleanse your face, you first need to make an oil blend. The main ingredient in the oil cleansing method is castor oil. Castor oil is the oil with cleaning abilities. Castor Oil has potent anti-inflammatory properties, but is also healing and cleansing. That’s why this oil is ideal for the Oil cleansing method. But castor oil alone is really thick and strong, and is not the cheapest oil either. That’s why we are going to make an oil mixture. We are going to use sunflower seed oil to mix with the castor oil. This oil is a lightweight oil that nurtures but does not clog the skin, and it’s not expensive at all. If you don’t have sunflower seed oil, good alternatives are extra virgin olive oil, or almond oil.

Now we are going to mix the two oils together. The ratio between the two oils depends on your skin type. The dryer the skin, the less castor oil you should use. The following blends are just suggestions. My advice is to start off with the suggested blends below, try it for a while, and adjust the blend to your personal preferences. I made the dry skin blend.

Oily Skin: Try a blend of 30% Castor Oil to 70% Sunflower Seed Oil. Balanced Skin: Try a blend of 20% Castor Oil to 80% Sunflower Seed Oil. Dry Skin: Try a blend of 10% Castor Oil to 90% Sunflower Seed Oil.

How To Use The Oil Cleansing Method

Now that you’ve made your personal oil blend, it’s time to clean your face.

Take a bit of the oil in the palm of your hand. Rub your hands together to warm the oil, and apply it to your face. Now use your fingertips to massage your face. This will make sure that it loosens all the dirt and gets everywhere on the face. Take as long as you need to massage your face. You can just work it in quickly if you’re hasty, or take the time to relax while massaging the face. The longer you massage, the better the treatment will work, but it’s not necessary.

For the ladies who wear make-up, this method is ideal. We are used to first remove all the make-up and then clean the face. With the oil cleansing method, there’s no need for that. It removes make-up and cleans your face in one step, which saves time. So go ahead and massage the oil over your eyes. You’ll see that the make-up comes loose easily. Now you can take a cotton pad and remove the make-up in the area around your eyes. If you don’t wear any make-up, you can just skip this step.

Now take a sponge, wash cloth or a small towel. Run this under a hot tab. The steam will open up your pores and remove the oil. The Castor Oil, though it is an oil, will help with the removal of the other oils. It is our main cleansing oil and is easily removed with warm water. Cold water won’t work. Wipe the washcloth over your face, removing all of the oil. Now run the towel under the tab again and wipe the face again until all the oil is removed.

Now pat the face dry. Feel how clean your face feels. It won’t feel oily or dirty at all. But you won’t get that taut feeling either. Your face feels soft and clean. You can apply moisturizer if you want, but probably you won’t even need it.

Warning: it is possible that the first few days you use the oil cleansing method, your skin gets a bit confused by the change. This may result in more oily skin or breakouts the first day’s, because the skin is still used to getting it’s oils stripped. Just continue the treatment and see again in one or two weeks. Your skin should react better to the method now.

Source: http://www.theoilcleansingmethod.com/

(Source: making-beauty)

Every once in a while, your skin deserves to be pampered a bit. A great way to do this is by treating your skin with a mask every week or so. Facemasks are actually the easiest beauty products you can make at home. All it takes is mixing up some ingredients which are good for the skin and you’re done.

Today I’m making a facemask with three ingredient’s which work wonders on your skin. The key ingredient in this facemask is turmeric. Turmeric is a spice used quite often in the Asian kitchen, but it works great for skincare too. In India it’s called “holy powder” and it is famous for healing wounds and infections. This mask works great for every skin type.

For this face mask you will need yogurt, honey and turmeric. Yogurt contains alpha-hydroxy-acids, which gently dissolves dead skin cells and thus exfoliate the skin. Honey is a natural antiseptic due, it attracts the dirt from skin pores and it moisturizes the skin. Turmeric is anti-bacterial, freshens the skin, makes it nice and soft, reduces puffiness and when regularly used it’s even supposed to reduce fine lines and wrinkles. So it’s a real miracle worker for the skin.

Start with a teaspoon full of yogurt.  The yogurt will be the base of the mask, but don’t use to much, or your mask will become to watery and run down your face.

Now add a teaspoon of turmeric to the yogurt and mix it up.

Now lastly add a teaspoon of honey to the mixture. Mix it up again, and your mask is ready to use. The mask is a bit thin, but it will stick to the face quite good because of the honey.

To use, apply a thin layer on the face. Is the easiest to do this with a brush. If you don’t have a brush for applying face masks, you can apply it with your fingers, but it will be a bit messier. Let it sit for about ten minutes before rinsing it off with warm water.

Warning: turmeric is a staining herb. It will give a yellow color to fabrics and other materials. It will make your face a bit yellow too, but this will come off quite easily. Make sure to wash your face thoroughly after using this mask. Using a face wash or scrub will make this easier. I recommend using this mask in the evening, when you won’t have to go anywhere.     

(Source: making-beauty)

Many store-bought lip products contain a lot of mineral oils, like petroleum jelly, which actually don’t do your lips any good, but just makes them feel soft for a little while. On the internet there are lots of stories about lip products being addictive or harmful for your health. While non these horror stories are scientifically proven, I would rather be sure than sorry and make a lip balm with only natural products with moisturizing properties.

To make this lip balm you basically need beeswax and oil. I chose olive and almond oil, because these are very good skin moisturizing oils and I already had them at home. You can go as crazy as you want with this. You could just use one simple oil, or you can use about 10 different oils. It depends on what you like. Other oils you can use for this recipe are apricot kernal oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, grapeseed oil, shea butter or cacao butter. If you want your lip balm to be a bit firmer, I recommend you use coconut oil, shea butter or cacao butter. As an extra ingredient I used honey in this lip balm, for it skin healing and moisturizing properties and it’s sweet taste  

Begin by making a double boiler. Fill a pan with some water and bring this to a boil. When the water is boiling, turn down the heat and place a heatproof jar or cup in the middle (I used a measuring cup)

Add two teaspoons of beeswax to your measuring cup. Now stir constantly until all the beeswax has melted.  

Now add your oils to the mixture. Use seven teaspoons in total. I added four teaspoons of olive oil and three teaspoons of almond oil. You can play around a bit with this part. Add as many oils as you like, but just make sure you end up adding seven teaspoons in total. Mix everything together.

Now turn off the heat , and take the jar out off the hot water. Add one teaspoon of honey to your mixture, and stir well so all off the ingredients are combined.

Keep stirring until the mixture is beginning to turn solid. Now pour your mixture in to a little jar or an old cleaned out lip balm container. If you have some lip balm left over when your container is filled, just pour it into a bigger jar. When your container of lip balm is empty, you can simply heat up the extra mixture again and refill your lip balm container. Or fill more lip balm containers right away and give the extra ones as a present to your loved ones.

This lip balm is very good for moisturizing lips, but it doesn’t stop there. You can also use this balm to treat dry spots on your body or for softening your cuticles. It’s just a great natural moisturizing balm

Original source: Zellweger, C. “Maak uw eigen natuurlijke cosmetica” Book, Dutch. Webpage author: www.wildandwise.com        

(Source: making-beauty)

Exfoliation is good for soft and glowing skin, but for some skin types it can be a little harsh. That’s why today I’m making a body scrub with some moisturizing ingredients in it. It’ll give you a good scrub, but also leave your skin soft and moisturized.

Today I’m adding honey and coffee creamer powder to my basic scrub recipe (see my previous post), to make it soothing and gentle for the skin. Olive oil is very moisturizing and honey has great softening abilities, is antibacterial and great for any skin type. Coffee creamer powder helps softening the salt a bit more. So these ingredients combined make a lovely scrub.

Start off with a cup of salt. The salt grains are the components of the scrub that will exfoliate your body.

Now add some olive oil and mix it up with the salt. Make sure that the mixture is not too wet and not too dry. All of the salt should be covered with oil and there should not be any excess oil on top of the salt.

Now add one tablespoon of honey and one package of coffee creamer powder.

Mix everything up and your custom made natural body scrub is done. You may want to add some extra salt or oil if your scrub turns out to be too wet or too dry. Make sure you have a nice balance between dry and wet ingredients. 

Now step in the shower and rub on the scrub. Give your body a nice massage while getting rid of dead skin cells. Be careful using this scrub if you have any wounds on your body, because the salt stings.