Greening my skin cleansing routine

I read on Nicola's blog - if it came from a plant about the way she is greening up her toiletries and in paticular, her skin cleansing routine which got stuck in a loop in my brain and eventually I had to do something about it.

I'm pretty good at buying green/natural/organic skin care lotions and makeup in the first place but I have a book called 'The Green Beauty Guide' and I wanted to make some bits an pieces out of that since I was on the cusp of needing more product anyway.

So I dug the book up, re-read some parts and dived into the kitchen to make some lotions and potions for myself...

Here's what I did...

I made up a cleanser with a combination of olive oil (which I normally use), rice bran oil (cause its a lot lighter and not so gluggy), some rose massage oil from the body shop, a few drops of rose and jasmine essential oils with some vanilla extract for scent.



It smells divine!

  I decanted that into a flip top bottle and voila - step one of my two step cleansing process was made. Julie Gabriel advises a two step method of face cleansing to get all the grime off; first cleanse with a oil product and wipe off as much as you can and then to use a soap (I made my own) to get the oil off as well as the bits that don't come off with the oil. She said it doesn't matter which order you do it in soap/oil or oil/soap but that if you do both steps you will be 'cleaner' than if you use one process alone.

Then I made a strong cup of green tea, waited for it to cool and used this with a drop or two of jasmine essential oil and a splash of vodka (for preservative) and decanted this into a spray bottle for my freshener/toner. I decided that I was having a floral theme for this set of face cleansers! 



The neighbour pointed out that if it didn't work on my face - I may have invented a green tea cocktail - either way, it will make the person using it feel better!!!



The moisturiser recipes were a bit further than I wanted to go that day so I dug out the moisturisers that I don't use for various reasons (to drying, too thick, too watery) and mixed them together in a small container until I got the consistency that suited me, popped in a few drops of Rose massage oil, a few drops of the floral essential oil and vanilla essence again, a bit of vitamin E and called it quits. Its a frugal moisturiser rather than a home made green one! I did start thinking that all those moisturisers may react together and burn my face or cause some sort of issue so I tested them on my hand for a few days before using it on my face. So far so good!

Once I got them up on the shelf - I decided that they needed to be a bit more decorative and jazzed them up a bit with some scrap papers. I still need to seal the paper covers with some PVA glue as so far, every time I pick up one of those containers - I have wet hands!

So far so good! I could kid myself that my skin is looking better. I think that may be due to actually cleansing my skin twice a day as I enjoy dong it as it smells divine and feels good!

There's lots of recipes for homemade green face care products on the net. Try a few and see how you go!


Score card:
Green-ness: Really green as all the ingredients were natural and I could eat the first two just about!
Frugal-ness: Since I had all the ingredients and bottles, this project didn't cost a cent - cant get much more frugal than that!
Time cost: About 1/2 an hour to make up all three products.
Skill level: Just like baking a cake - just follow the recipe!

Fun -ness: Great fun - and I enjoy the process of cleansing my face much more now!