I’m the kind of girl who likes to keep her beauty routines fairly simple. I wash, tone and moisturize my face daily, sometimes twice daily, and hit the road sans-makeup. Makeup is not a vital part to my everyday practice, unless I’m preparing for the paparazzi that are my friends, attempting to document my ever-present thumb-like appearance.
I’ve battled with uneven skin tone and acne scars forever. Thanks to puberty and being a grease ball up until my latter years of high school, I had two recurring zits that spent more time in my life than some friends; one on my cheek and one on my chin. According to my naive brain, I picked at them until they’d bleed thinking, “Wow, these are definitely going to be gone by tomorrow!” Alas, 20+ years into adulthood and I still pay for these mistakes.
Thankfully, a stable routine of wash, tone and moisturize has reduced the appearance of scars to tiny specs on my face, mistakable for freckles. Occasionally, my zits from my younger years creep back into my life and make me feel like a grimy 13-year-old again. That, my friends, is when I break out the face masks and scrubs.
I’ve always bought pre-made scrubs, kept them in my shelves for ions longer than their expiration and used them a few times a month for brightening, tightening and clearing up my skin. They likely could be causing more harm to my face than help, considering they are essentially ornaments of my medicine cabinet. So when the zits approached this month, I decided to become an active member in the relationship with my face and make a DIY face scrub.
Did you know you can put mayonnaise on your FACE? I'm sure it's good for your mug since it's full of fat and oils, which are shockingly beneficial, but the thought of putting something on my face that I’m supposed to put on healthy sandwiches to make them taste better is a little frightening. The internet is a scary place sometimes. I settled for a regimen that is exfoliating, detoxifying and helps to minimize pores. I convinced my pal Leslie to embark on the adventure with me and we hopped to it.
For the exfoliative purposes, I chose organic sugar. Sugar helps to naturally peel away dried, dead skin. It also tastes pretty good if you accidentally get some in your mouth while you apply it.
To detoxify, I chose to buy activated charcoal to mix in with the sugar. After spending roughly 30 minutes looking at the supplement wall at the local Walmart and coming up empty handed, I asked the pharmacist to show me the way. She directed me to the area filled with pills for, of all places, gas pain and relief. I actually bought a box of capsules with activated charcoal, traditionally intended to keep farts at bay, to rub onto my face. Cute.
To minimize pores, I sliced a lemon in halves for Leslie and I. We took the lemon, rubbed it in a mixture of raw honey, vitamin E oil and maracuja oil (grapefruit seed) and then dipped it into a combination of the charcoal and sugar. We rubbed the lemon directly onto our faces in a circular motion until we used all of the black gooey scrub we prepared.
The application was a bit messy, since we were dripping oozy black sugar all over ourselves and the table. Washing our hands proved to be a little tough, so we were nervous the masks were going to stain our skin black. The masks tingled, thick and sticky on our faces while we let them sit for 10 minutes. After scrubbing to get any remainder of black residue off of our faces with a little face wash, we applied a little bit of vitamin E and maracuja oils to our faces and went to bed.
The after results were simple, yet effective and noticeable. We had softer skin, fully exfoliated and moisturized, that smelled like citrus. In the morning, I noticed smaller pores on both of us and an even application of Leslie’s makeup. We looked bright and refreshed! The mask also pulled forth a few white heads on my skin, leaving it ready to be popped and washed to clear it out completely.
Since I still have a leftover lemon and a bunch of gas reducing charcoal pills, I’ll definitely be doing the scrub again. It required little prep and produced quick results! Try out my version, eyeballing the ingredients to what seems necessary (that’s what I did) and see for yourself.
Juli Holbert is a junior studying journalism at Ohio University. Have a suggestion for her next adventure? Let her know by emailing or tweeting her at jh673913@ohio.edu/@juliangela.
