CHICKPEA SEWING STUDIO

Oatmeal Mask: no portrait..sorry!

I though I would elaborate a little (or a lot!) on the oatmeal masks I have been giving myself. By the time I am done reporting on my cosmetic experiments you'll have all the steps to give yourself a facial. But one thing at a time: today, breakfast smelling mask, we said it's called kitchen cosmetics remember?

You can do this in two ways, both are pleasant enough, one not vegan.

Fetch yourself a large glass of water and set aside about an hour.

For each method you will need to grind oatmeal as fine as you can get it, as fine as flour if you manage. I use about 1/2 cup of oatmeal. The best tool I have found to do this is the mini Cuisinart food processor.

In the first method you just add yogurt to make a thick paste, raw if you can find it, regular yogurt, not fat free, not too creamy.
This will be very tasty, but don't eat it all. Cover your face with with a thick layer and lay down, this mask can be runny. You might feel a little tingling which is good. The lactic acid in the yogurt is exfoliating and helping with sun damage.
The first time I used this, I looked very scary, but I felt like a million bucks afterward...

The other more complicated method require a few or a lot of ingredients. If my skin needs rescue, and it does today from trying a cleanser with alcohol and too much beeswax ( baaad idea), I will go for the fancied oatmeal mask.

Start with the same quantity of ground oats, this time add:

A shot glass (2 ounces?) of warm water.
A shot glass of Aloe Vera juice.
A teaspoon of vegetable glycerin. (Very good to bind all the ingredients and help stick it to you face)
Some Calendula extract.
Three drops of Chamomile essential oil.

You can omit the juice and the plants, or you can make a tea with those plants and use it as your liquid.
If you have the little food processor blend it all in there.

Once you have prepared the mask, and drank your water, get yourself another glass. If anything you will have done well for yourself by drinking.
Then grab a small towel or washcloth and drench it in very warm water. "Steam" your face with it a few times, now you can apply the mask. It's a lot easier with a brush for the first one and with you fingers with the second.

Keep the yogurt base mask on for no more than 20 minutes, the vegan mask can stay on until it dries.

When rinsing the mask off your face, wet it well first with the wash cloth to soften it. You don't want to scrape it off your face and get nasty red splotches.Do yourself a favor and rinse the mask in the kitchen sink, you drains will thank you!

Moisturize well if you feel you need to, and  look up the glow in the mirror...Try it and tell me what you think!

Smell this blog post

Scene: hopeful husband enters the kitchen, wife is definitely in the middle of something.

Thomas: "what are you making for diner tonight, I am hungry?"
Juliette: "homemade deodorant, you want some?"
Thomas: " another time maybe, I think I'll have a frozen Burrito instead."
Juliette: "Yes, do that."

This is the kind of things common at the house lately. The summer has been filled with experiments in kitchen cosmetics and after a few month I am ready to report on the results... It's all good.

It all started when my cosmetician used an oatmeal mask on my face. I was like, 'I'm paying for that?', but I got out of there with my best skin ever: g.l.o.w.i.n.g.
After a few experiments on my own, and some (profoundly) hilarious/embarrassing auto portraits in the bathroom mirror I realized that home made masks usually perform better than every single cream I ever bought.
I was onto something, and Karin pointed out to me that many bloggers had been trying it themselves. I wouldn't know because I don't get much time to read anything...I blame the baby.
Libraries are a great resource for obtaining every book ever written on the subject and still having some money left for the ingredients. I especially recommend This Book by Stephanie Tourles. It doesn't look as fancy as this one but I found it better overall, although I would recommend them both. The real treasure is Better Basics for the home from Annie Berthold-Bond. The recipes are straight forward and turned out yummy. I have tried the basic cream and the baby lotion and so far we are both impressed. Finn had bad dry spots on his legs and they are almost gone after using it three times.
I also let myself be convinced by this fellow blogger to try the angry chicken deodorant and it might be out there with the baby lotion in awesomeness, I even made some for Thomas ( the lion on the baby food container.) I am the elephant, no comment on that please!

So here, I have a new past time... what time?
It comes with two side activities: finding containers to recycle and spending hours checking the safety of cosmetics and ingredients on the coolest website I have found in month: Cosmeticdatabase. Try-it, it's alarmingly cool!