Green tea is amazing for your skin. It’s no secret that I love this awesome ingredient! That’s why I wanted to make a new face wash that made use of green tea. It is great for people with sensitive skin, and it is naturally anti-inflammatory. Plus the green tea can reduce the appearance of pores and make your skin look fresh and happy!

As someone with sensitive skin and redness myself, I like to be careful about what I put on my skin. Making my own face wash helps me to be confident that I know exactly what goes into my products and also know that they are healthy for my skin and most importantly, safe. (And it doesn’t hurt that it also usually costs less to make things myself).

I’ve previously made a honey face wash, and an aloe vera face wash. I loved both (and I still do). But I’m loving using green tea in my recipes so much lately that I wanted to make another. And this green tea and honey face wash does not disappoint!

In combination with my green tea face scrub, this seriously is amazing for my skin. But don’t be intimidated- it’s super easy to make. And even better, it only costs $4!

This recipe only has natural ingredients that are good for your skin. If you want to know where to buy these ingredients, just click on the name of the ingredient. Here’s why I chose them:

• Green Tea Powder: Full of antioxidants and vitamins your skin needs, anti-inflammatory to reduce redness and irritation, the caffeine in green tea helps tighten skin and reduce the appearance of pores
• Honey: A natural humectant (draws moisture into the skin), naturally antibacterial, full of antioxidants
• Soapwort Extract: Has a high concentration of natural saponins (help clean your skin), gentle suds, gentle natural face wash
• Avocado Oil: Full of vitamin E and antioxidants that are healthy for your skin, natural moisturizer
• Essential Oils: Can have different benefits depending on the oil. I used chamomile in this recipe, but lavender, tea tree, and geranium are all also good anti-inflammatory oils.

Since the face wash has so much honey, it may feel a little stickier than you are used to, but it doesn’t make it any less amazing! When you wash it off you’ll see just how wonderful it is. Your skin will thank you!

I’m in love with this amazing face wash. Try making it yourself and let me know if you love it too!

supplies used in this post

The post Homemade Anti-Inflammatory Green Tea Honey Face Wash appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.

I love lip balm. I don’t know why my lips are so dry, even in the summer, but they are. And so I always have some with me. Well, I made some awesome homemade honey lip balm a while ago, and I am almost out of it. So when I went to make a new batch I decided that I should try making it tinted. Why not have a little color while I moisturize my lips?

And the results were awesome. Why spend extra on tinted lip balm at the store when you can make it yourself? You don’t have to worry about what is in it. Some of the worst offenders of the unnatural and toxic chemicals in our cosmetic products are artificial colors and scents. Well, this lip balm is tinted and scented naturally.

And at 40 cents a tube you can’t beat the price. That includes the price of the empty chapstick tube. Counting only the ingredients, it only costs 13 cents to make one tube! Amazing.

All the ingredients in this lip balm serve a purpose:

• Coconut Oil: natural moisturizer, antibacterial, full of antioxidants and nutrients your skin needs (you can get it here– make sure your coconut oil is organic, unrefined, and cold-pressed)
• Honey: Naturally anti-bacterial, natural humectant (attracts moisture to the skin), (use a raw, organic honey, and local is preferred)
• Beeswax: protects skin against damaging elements, antioxidant, anti-bacterial, and anti-inflammatory, keeps lip balm solid at warmer temperature (you can get it here)
• Beet Root Powder: Natural colorant (you can get it here)
• Essential Oils (optional): for scent

I get my empty chapstick containers on amazon (like most of my ingredients).

This picture illustrates how you know the lip balm is done. The easiest mistake to make for this recipe is to not heat the coconut oil, beeswax, and honey for long enough. The honey takes a higher temperature to combine with the coconut oil and beeswax.

It is a subtle difference, but you can see in the picture on the left that the honey is “heavier” and sits on the bottom. On the right it mixes with the other ingredients.

There may be a little separation when you add the beet root powder, which is not a problem. Just make sure it is warm enough and mix it well before you pour it into the tubes and it should turn out fine. 

Looks pretty great right? It feels even better!

This should make about 10 tubes of lip balm

If you want to put labels on your lip balm, 2″x2″ labels fit my tubes perfectly. I think its always fun to have a label on a product you make yourself. It makes it feel even more professional.

My lips feel a little spoiled right now.

You can play around with other natural tints to get a different color. This was just the bright raspberry color I was going for, but nutmeg and cinnamon are also natural colorants that could be mixed with beet root powder to get your desired color. There are a bunch of other natural colorants as well, but you probably have those two on hand.
Next time I make these, I might just add some extra SPF as well. I’ll update the post if I end up doing that.

Try making yourself some tinted lip balm and let me know how it goes for you!

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The post How to Make All Natural Homemade Tinted Lip Balm/ Chapstick appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.

Last weekend we had a picnic for my boyfriend’s brother’s birthday. It was a lovely time and the food was delicious. Lars’s mom is a great cook/baker and she made an incredible gluten free red velvet cake. Anyways, when I read the terrible ingredients in my sunscreen, I decided not to wear it. I stayed in the shade a lot. Well, that didn’t work out and I got a sunburnt nose anyways. (Meaning it’s time to make a homemade sunscreen, but that will be another post).

My nose was starting to peel so I figured it was time to come up with a new exfoliator. I love my coconut lavender face exfoliator, but coconut oil on my face has been making me break out lately, so I figured I would make a more acne-friendly version. And I’m in love with the results.

Oh, and it only costs 75 cents to make one batch of it.

You’re also doing a favor to the environment if you make your own exfoliator. Most of the exfoliators you can buy in stores contain microbeads- which are made of plastic! I don’t want to wash my face with plastic! Let alone send it down my drain every day. These microbeads are becoming an epidemic in our waterways and Illinois just banned them in personal care products. So do yourself a favor and use an exfoliator that exfoliates with something other than plastic.

All you need to make this scrub are a few simple ingredients:

• Honey: Naturally anti-bacterial, good for acne, natural humectant (attracts moisture to the skin)
• Baking Soda: Gentle natural exfoliator
• Cinnamon: Natural acne treatment, antiseptic, cleanses pores, stimulates blood vessels on surface of the skin
• Lemon Essential Oil (optional): astringent, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, natural acne treatment

I need to warn you: you will need to resist the desire to eat this face scrub. Especially if you love honey anywhere as much as me. The honey and cinnamon together smell amazing. And if you use lemon essential oil it will smell even MORE amazing. Like snickerdoodle cookies.

You could eat it and be just fine- but I don’t think it would taste good with the baking soda in it. But that’s the beauty of these homemade recipes. You literally could eat them with no worries. 

My skin feels so fresh and amazing after using this scrub. The cinnamon definitely added a tingly-ness that lasted about 10 minutes after. I love that feeling. And the scrub took off all my peely sunburnt skin.

Don’t you love the fresh feeling after you’ve exfoliated? Well, with this scrub you get that feeling PLUS the amazing, natural, scents.

Just looking at this picture I feel like I can still smell it. Is it bad to exfoliate multiple times a day? Probably. I will have to use restraint not to use this all the time because it smells so incredibly amazing. 

Try making this incredibly easy exfoliator- and let me know how it goes for you!

The post Honey Cinnamon Face Exfoliator/ Scrub appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.

I don’t know about you, but for some reason my lips are always super dry. I end up going through a lot of chapstick. I always have at least one tube in my nightstand and one in my purse and at least two others scattered throughout the house. Well, I was reading the chapstick bottle and it had some of the 13 ingredients to avoid. So I figured I should try to make my own. I found this recipe from The Frugal Greenish Mama.

It only costs about $4 to make 6 tubes of this lip balm- and that is including the price of the empty tubes. If you are going to reuse a container, the lip balm itself only costs 93 cents for six tubes. Pretty unbeatable price.

All the ingredients and supplies you need

I don’t know why all my homemade beauty products keep ending up being only three ingredients- I guess I am just drawn to the simplicity! Well- this one is nice and easy:

• Honey: Natural humectant (attracts moisture to the skin), antibacterial, natural antioxidant, smells and tastes awesome (use a local, organic, raw honey for full benefits)
• Coconut Oil: Natural moisturizer, antibacterial, full of nutrients your skin needs, smells awesome (use an organic, unrefined, cold pressed coconut oil for full benefits)
• Beeswax: Protective coat on skin, anti-inflammatory, keeps chapstick solid at room temperature

Seriously, these are all amazing natural ingredients that take a long time to expire. Why isn’t all lip balm and chapstick made using this recipe? I don’t know.

Make sure you also have some empty chapstick tubes or tins on hand when you make this recipe. You can easily buy them online here or here or here.

I prefer tubes just because I think it’s easier than tins to apply, but it’s all based on personal preference.

This is what the lip balm will look like when you first add it to the stove- the beeswax will melt and the honey will turn a darker color as it heats up

Here is what you will want to do:

I made the mistake of not heating mine long enough, so the honey and coconut oil separated a bit. The lip balm still turned out fine- there are just a few tubes with more honey in them. Make sure to heat for the full amount of time.

This recipe should make about 6 tubes of lip balm or 2 tins of lip balm. You can easily double or triple the amount to make more if you like.

I’m pretty happy with the quality of this homemade lip balm. I feel like I don’t have to apply it as often as chapstick I buy from the store. My only complaint is the smell of the beeswax is a little overpowering. Next time I will probably add a bit of an essential oil to help counteract the smell.

And they’re done! That was easy.

Let me know how making homemade lip balm goes for you!

supplies used in this post

The post How to make homemade lip balm/ chapstick (only three ingredients!) appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.

If you’ve read my post on 13 harmful ingredients to avoid in cosmetics, you can understand why I am trying to make the switch over to making all my own cosmetics. I scared myself in my research about what cosmetics are made out of. Now that I know, I have a goal to know every ingredient in my cosmetics and try to make instead of buy whenever possible.

So, one of the first things I needed to make was a face wash. I found this recipe on One Good Thing by Jillee and I loved it immediately. Anything with 3 ingredients or less, especially if one of those ingredients is honey, is okay by me. 

Ingredients

All you need for this face wash is honey, vegetable glycerin, and liquid castile soap. I recommend using a local raw organic honey if possible because they are the best quality and will be best for your skin.

Honey is full of antioxidants and it is antibacterial so it can help fight and prevent acne. Both honey and vegetable glycerin are humectants, which means they attracts moisture to the skin. Castile soap is made of plant oils and is free of the harsh cleaners and detergents in most soaps you can buy in the store. Not all soaps labeled “castile soap” are made solely of plant oils, so make sure to check the label before you buy.

If you have trouble finding vegetable glycerin or castile soap, they are easy to find on amazon. I use this vegetable glycerin and this castile soap.

Mix everything together- it’s about as easy as it gets

Here is the recipe:

Face wash in action

One of the complaints that people sometimes have about homemade facial cleaners is that they don’t lather- but this one does! Just see the picture!

Also- I expected it to feel sticky because the honey and vegetable glycerin both have somewhat sticky textures. It does not feel sticky at all! It feels like any other face wash I have used before. And it smells like honey- plus!

This face wash will probably take a long time to expire- honey never expires and castile soap and vegetable glycerin both take years to expire- but if it starts to smell weird or have a strange texture make sure not to use it.

One of the things I want to try in the future is adding a little lemon essential oil to combat oil. I will probably try that in the summer when my skin gets it’s oiliest and I will update this post and let you all know how it goes!

Let me know if you like switching to this face wash and how it goes for you!

The post 3 Ingredient Homemade Honey Face Wash appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.