DIY: Aloe Vera Face Mask

I follow a bunch of great beauty blogs and my favorite posts are usually about DIY recipes for homemade skin care. I've spent the past two years learning how to make homemade beauty products, and it is not easy. When I find DIY recipes that require only a few ingredients and are easy to make, I get excited.

Today, I tried an Aloe Vera Face Mask recipe from Revitalise Your Health.

The ingredients were simple and made total sense:

• 1 tablespoon of powdered seaweed (kelp)
• ½ tablespoon of Aloe Vera gel
• ½ tablespoon of raw honey
• 1 capsule of vitamin E
• A few drops of essential oils (I used 3 drops of lavender)

The instructions were quick and easy too:
Combine all ingredients together and mix well, squeeze out contents of vitamin E capsule and add to mixture. Apply mixture to face, throat, and neck. Leave on for approximately 20-30 minutes. Rinse using warm water.

And the the verdict:

This recipe gets an A+ for simplicity of ingredients and preparation. It literally took me less than 10 minutes to gather the ingredients, make the recipe and apply it to my face.

However, I have to take some points off for application. It was so messy! The mask clumped together and did not spread evenly on the skin. It was actually a challenge to get this much of it on (see picture on right). And I recommend applying the mask before you clean your bathroom because it was all over my sink. I can overlook all of this because making homemade beauty products is a messy business overall.

The removal part of the process was a little better. It took a while to come off, but it was less messy than the application part. Caveat: You will have kelp pieces all over your hair if you apply it near your hair line.

As for the results, my skin definitely felt as if it had a mask treatment. It was softer and smoother, but it was also very red. I don't have overly sensitive skin, but if a product causes a reaction, it is very visible. The skin around my nose and cheeks was definitely red, but it didn't feel irritated at all. Weird!

Instead of applying moisturizer right away, I waited a few minutes to see how my skin felt after it dried. The texture of my skin still felt good as did the level of moisture. I didn't have that dry, tightness that I usually feel after using most face masks.

After about 10 minutes, I checked again for redness. It had reduced significantly to only a few red blotches, so I applied a light layer of emu oil, known for reducing inflammation. My skin soaked it up.

Overall, the Aloe Vera Fask Mask was a great little DIY project. It was easy to use and left my skin feeling smooth and pampered. Beware, however, if you have sensitive skin.

DIY Diary: Back To The Drawing Board With Paste Deodorant

A few months ago, I wrote about my first experiment with homemade deodorant. After using it with great success for about three months, I started noticing my underarm skin was feeling sensitive. It was nothing visible, but I quit using the deodorant for a couple weeks to let my skin go au naturale. My boyfriend didn't have any problems with it until we traveled to Miami for a hot, Christmas holiday with my family. The deodorant melted in transport, but he continued to use it unaware that it had probably gone bad by this point. It started irritating his skin too, so finally it went in the trash. We both took breaks from deodorants for a few days.

In the mean time, I went back to the drawing board. Since I felt irritation first, I figured the deodorant must have been going bad before the Great Melt. I reviewed the recipe, which included only three things that I haven't used before for skin care: bentonite clay, juniper berry essential oil and cypress essential oil. I switched out the bentonite clay for white clay, added some oatmeal flour, and reduced the concentration of essential oils. I also added rosemary essential oil to help better preserve the deodorant paste.

The initial results are promising. The color is more reminiscent of commercial deodorants. The texture is nicer with the addition of the oatmeal, a little less oily with a little more firmness. The scent is nice and light. The first batch was good, but it ended up being a little too fragrant for my taste.

One drawback to our testing is that we are using a jar container and scooping up the paste with our fingers. I haven't found a good online vendor for deodorant tubes yet, so for now I will take advantage of our application method to test the deodorant's shelf life.

We've used it for two days with regular pit checks to test for effectiveness. So far so good...