How I cleanse, tone and moisturize my face with natural products

Tags

alternative, avocado oil, beauty, chemical, cleanse, macadamia oil, moisturize, natural, oil, oils, olive oil, tone

I have very pale, very sensitive skin and very pale blue eyes. I’ve been trying to find natural alternatives to use to cleanse, tone and moisturize and also natural alternatives for makeup. I find it difficult enough to find manufactured makeup that suits my colouring and doesn’t end up looking really heavy and unnatural so it’s probably not surprising that I’ve had more success with the former than the latter.

• First of all -Spots

I used to get break outs of spots all over my chin just about all of the time. A friend advised me to take a vitamin B6 supplement and they completely disappeared! So there’s just a very quick bit of advice – spots on your chin? – try a vitamin B6 supplement. If I do ever feel a spot developing I just sweep some cider vinegar over the area and it usually stops it in its tracks.

• Cleanse

I have discovered that absolutely the best way to cleanse my skin is with oil and a hot flannel. I use avocado oil most but sometimes macadamia or olive.

I’m not sure about the ethics here though. I come from Scotland – I really don’t know what sort of oil I would have to use in order for it to be locally sourced. I mean our climate is definitely not conducive to any of the above mentioned plants. I’m doing my best to try to rationalise what I use and how I spend my money and also the impact of these things on the environment and other people. Clearly the oils I use have traveled very far to reach me. What do you think about this? Also, I’m fairly ignorant when it comes to oils – if anybody has some advice about the most ethical way I can do this I’d welcome it 🙂 However, if you live in America or the Mediterranean or somewhere like that then you won’t have to worry about this moral conundrum.

These are the types and brands of oil I have in the cupboard at the moment:

Oil removes all makeup – including waterproof, incredibly well. What I usually do is gently put oil all over my face and leave it for a minute – then I put a face cloth / flannel under hot running water and then wring it out and gently wipe the oil from my face. All of the makeup comes away onto the flannel. I usually rinse out the flannel and repeat.

That’s it! It leaves your skin feeling very clean and moisturised. If you have oily skin don’t worry – it is actually beneficial to use oil based cleansers if you have oily skin prone to spots. If you over-use astringent cleansers and try to remove the oil from your skin the more it produces (or so I believe) and so this course of action is actually counter-productive. Cleansing with oils means that your skin won’t over-produce its own oils because it won’t have to.

• Tone

I don’t do this all that often because my skin is so sensitive but if I have any signs of a spot coming I’ll do this and it is a good toner if you don’t have sensitive skin. I sweep some slightly diluted apple cider vinegar (with the mother) over the area. You can do this over any parts of your face that you’d like to tone.

To be honest I really don’t feel the need to tone and I don’t do it very often at all.

This is the apple cider vinegar brand I use. I also add a little to my henna mix when I dye my hair.

• Moisturise

Usually after cleansing with oil I don’t need to do any extra moisturising but if I really want to treat my skin then I’ll rub a little extra oil in, leave it for a few minutes and then dab off any excess. Then I’ll go to bed and wake up with super moisturised skin.

So basically I use only oil and occasionally cider vinegar on my face to cleanse and moisturise and the skin on my face has never looked better! (Clearly that’s not altogether true – it looked WAY better when I was younger!)

I have started to use more natural makeup products with various degrees of success and I’ll do a separate post about that soon.

As always I’d love to hear from anybody else who uses natural products and has recommendations!

I hope this has been interesting and useful.

For homemade exfoliator see my post: https://blossombombs.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/home-made-exfoliator/

 

My macrobiotic life: how I henna my hair

Tags

caca rouge, chemical, hair dye, henna, how I henna my hair, how to henna hair, lush, natural, renaissance henna

Living a macrobiotic lifestyle isn’t just about eating natural and ethical foods. It’s about embracing as many natural and ethical ways of doing things as you can. It can be difficult and I’m only just starting out but one of the things I’ve found really successful is switching from chemical hair dyes to henna. I thought it might be nice to do a blog post about how I go about it and what has and hasn’t worked for me. I’d love to hear from anybody else who uses henna. What type do you use? where do you get it? What method do you find works best for you and how long do you prefer to leave it in?

My natural hair colour is a sort of reddy brown that goes really quite blonde in the summer and really quite dark in the winter.  Here are some photos of my natural hair colour:

However I have been dying my hair off and on since I was about 19 years old. That’s why I’m so young in the two photos I could find with my natural hair. The top one I was at primary school I think and the bottom I was about 16.

I have mostly dyed my hair black over the years though I have experimented with reds and one time I went blonde. See examples below:

Chemical blonde

That’s me in the black and white dress

Chemical black

Chemical red

Chemical red

Chemical black

Chemical black

To be honest I’ve had pretty much every colour under the sun – including some real disasters!

Chemical hair dyes have links to bladder cancer, many serious skin conditions and can have devastating symptoms when a person is allergic to any of the myriad ingredients that can be found in them. I say all this and I have been dying my hair for a VERY long time and would happily change my colour more than once in a month. I have used an awful lot of hair dye over the years. I did it without really thinking about the consequences to myself or the environment.

There are many natural ways to tint your hair but henna’s effect lasts longer than a vegetable rinse and adds shine, highlights and bounce to your hair. Henna products, which are gluten-free and animal-cruelty-free, are not always a red colour, but all henna contains and imparts a little red. You can get henna in a wide array of shades, not just red, but it will not lighten hair. The other colours usually contain indigo. Henna enhances your natural colour rather than totally covering it, which allows some of your natural highlights to come through. Coating and sealing advantages are inherent with henna.

You still need to be careful when selecting henna products. The FDA states that certain “black henna” may contain the “coal tar” color p-phenylenediamine. This is very toxic – DO NOT BUY HENNA THAT HAS PPD in it. You must make sure that any henna you buy is 100% natural. It shouldn’t have anything other than cassia, henna, indigo in it. Lush henna has herbal ingredients and so on and that’s fine but the colouring agents must be one of, or a combination of, the ones listed above.

My favourite products are Lush Caca Rouge and Renaissance henna. I always use 100% henna only. That makes your hair very red though! Not for the faint-hearted.

Lush henna

Renaissance henna

There are various ways you can mix up henna but my preferred method after trying a few things out is just to add hot water and a little cider vinegar. I leave it for a few hours and then put it into dry hair. It can be tricky to do as the mixture is thick and doesn’t spread the way other dyes do. You get the hang of it with practice though. Then you wrap it in cling film or a carrier bag and wrap your head in a warm towel. I leave it on for 4 hours usually but occasionally wear it to bed then rinse it out in the morning.

Henna has quite a strong smell but I don’t find it unpleasant (though many people do). It is VERY  messy! It takes a lot longer than chemical dye. Despite these minor drawbacks I can’t recommend switching to henna highly enough!

My hair has improved in health no end and feels stronger, thicker and is much shinier than when I was constantly dying it. I know that only natural ingredients are touching me and that I haven’t added to environmental damage in the process.

It’s so difficult to photograph red hair! It doesn’t look as unnatural and uneven in real life – honestly! I’ll try and get a better photo soon.

I used a lot of flash indoors to try and show you what the colour looks like out of the sun – this is the best I could get but hopefully it gives you some idea…

I used a lot of flash indoors to try and show you what the colour looks like out of the sun – this is the best I could get but hopefully it gives you some idea…

I used a lot of flash indoors to try and show you what the colour looks like out of the sun – this is the best I could get but hopefully it gives you some idea…

There’s a really fantastic guide to dying your hair with henna here:

http://offbeathome.com/2011/11/dying-your-hair-red-with-henna

that’s very detailed. The link she lists for the free book doesn’t work but here is the one that does:

http://www.hennaforhair.com/freebooks/