25 Days of Beauty: DIY Facial

Well, week three was a bust. I had the stuff done too, but I've been fighting with Youtube upload still and when I try to go around one problem another one appears.  Anyway, enough complaining.  One of my favorite things to do is a facial. I try to do them twice a week to keep my skin looking soft and new. Sometimes, if I'm having break outs, I like to do them then too. It helps get rid of the dead skin on top.  Since Christmas seems to make people angrier than normal, I thought I'd share a nice spa day ritual with everyone.  Now, before we begin, I will forewarn you. This one is involved. I'm just as cheap as anyone else, so everything I did came strictly from the kitchen.  Another thing, if you face isn't used to this kind of thing, then you may have a break out.  It's not a bad thing. When you take off the top layers of skin, the acne underneath will have a chance to a go to the top/  Also, one last thing, If you're going to a big event, please please please don't do this the night before.  Why? For the above reason.  You should start routines like this at least six weeks in advance. If you can't just don't.  So before we begin, let me give you a look at all you'll need. 

The steps will go

cleanse (Jason stuff)

steam (towels)

scrub (first white bowl)

peel (blue cup)

mask (second white bowl)

tone (glass)

moisturizer (tall jar)

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I would recommend wrapping up your hair. You're going to be putting a lot of stuff on your face, and keeping it out of your hair can be difficult. 

Wash your face like you normally would. Mostly you want to get your make up off your face, so that you can get right to your skin. 

If you went to an actual salon they would give you a steam treatment. This makes the skin soft and opens pores. If you were a professional, this would make extraction a lot easier too. Despite how much we like to do our own extractions, it's not good for us. We bruise our skin. 

Anyway, back to steaming. 

You can do this one of two ways. 

1. Boil water and hold your head over it until your skin is warm and soft. Since that's hard on my back, I like to do it the second way. 

2. Take a wash cloth, preferably a clean one, and run it under hot water. Put it on your face. 

You can apply some essential oils if you want to add some extra oomph to the facial, but I didn't have any so I didn't. 

All right, here comes some DIY. I scoured the internet and found this pretty cool recipe for a oatmeal facial scrub. 

You'll need: 

A bowl

Tablespoon

Oatmeal

Honey

Coconut Oil

2 Tablespoons of oatmeal

1 Tablespoon of honey

1 Tablespoon of coconut oil. (Or any, really, I'm just partial to coconut oil.)

You may want melt the coconut oil before hand, but as we all know. I'm an idiot. 

Mix it all together. 

First, apply it to your face. Then scrub in circular motions until you feel like you've got your whole face. Once your done, rinse your face off. 

Next you can make your own face peel. So, part of a facial is that you want to get the dead skin off your face. Skin turns over every seven days, and even less as we grow older. The trick is to get it off faster so that the shiny baby skin can come through. 

You need

Cup

Unflavored Gelatin

Honey

Milk

Tablespoon

1 packet of unflavored gelatin

1 tablespoon of honey

1 tablespoon of milk

Mix

Microwave for 10 seconds. I don't recommend for any longer. This stuff dries quickly so you don't want to wait a super long time for it to cool down. 

Apply it kind of thickly. 

I think in future I'll double the recipe and mix it better. It's better to put it on thickly simply because it makes it easier to peel. 

Let it dry.

Peel. 

All right, we're getting towards the end. After you've done a peel, you'll want to relax your skin. I recommend a face mask. 

You need

Bowl

Cocoa Powder

Yogurt

Honey

tablespoon

This is a super simple recipe. It's a 1:1 ratio. 

1 Tablespoon cocoa powder

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon yogurt. 

(Easy right?)

Mix

It looks like melted chocolate when your done and smells amazing. 

Apply it pretty thickly all over your face, just not in your eye area. 

Let it dry. 

This part is optional. You can take cucumber and apply that to your under eye area. 

This is actually the cucumber puree left over from the toner in the next step. I put it under the eye, but it didn't want to stay very well and kept running down. If you're going to do an eye pack, I recommend using cucumber slices. 

This is a step that gets skipped a lot, but if you were getting a professional facial, they'd use a toner on your skin. This helps balance the skin and soothe it. 

I found a pretty nifty recipe for diy cucumber toner. 

You'll need

Cucumber

Honey

Blender

Strainer

Cup

First peel and chop the cucumber into small bits. 

Put it the blender until it makes a paste. 

It's going to look something like this. 

Run that through a strainer. This will leave you with cucumber juice, and some pulp left over. That' you can use on your eyes later. 

Add a teaspoon of honey and mix it all up. 

And I'm not sure what happened to the picture of me putting it on, but you'll need a cotton ball or two and just rub it all over your face. 

Last step. 

Again, I don't know why I don't have a picture of this, but go ahead and moisturize your face. I use coconut oil at night just because that's one of the best. 

I don't recommend using it during the day though, just because it take so long to absorb.  

And your done. 

Now remember

You can do the steps with store bought products. Also, if anything burns or itches your skin don't use it. Take it off immediately. 

I hope you enjoy your spa day. 

As always,