Washing Your Face With Flowers, Dirt, and Food

A couple of you have written me with questions about how to use a face wash composed of flowers, dirt and food. Well, I don't blame you for wondering. It is a little unusual washing your face with a collection of dry ingredients.

Here's a step by step of the method, along with a couple of tips.

Method

Start with dry hands. (that was both a tip and a description of the method)

Shake out approx. a teaspoon of product into your palm.

Tip: Cap the bottle/jar immediately as you don't want any moisture getting into your lovely (and completely unpreserved) product.

Add water (or, for extra fabulous luxury, add hydrosol).

Tip: Drip only a few drops of water (or hydrosol) at a time and mix carefully with your finger to keep the mixture together. You'll see it morph into a different texture as you add water and stir in your palm. When you have a thinnish paste, your face wash is ready to be applied. (This process takes less than a minute)

Wet your free hand and moisten your face and neck with it.
Now, apply the mixture to your face and neck and massage gently. 

Here, I am using the cornflower lavender combo with violet clay from this post. (notice how the violet clay clearly adds a tint of color)

Tip: Do not allow the mixture to dry on your face. Clay only draws out impurities while it's wet. It can dry out your skin if you leave it on too long. (this is also true of any clay mask)

Tip: If you have normal, oily or combination skin, you can leave the mixture on for 1-2 minutes (for example while you brush your teeth).

Rinse, pat dry, and mist your face with hydrosol or quality skin tonic, and finish with a few drops of face oil.

Enjoy your fabulous-looking skin!

How Often?

A couple of you have asked me how often to use this face wash. Because this is a DIY recipe with any number of ingredients, it's a bit hard for me to answer that. My own mixture (above) with lavender, cornflower, clay and ground oats is gentle enough for me to use on my (mature) skin every day.

You have to play around with the combination of ingredients and try each one out to see how your skin reacts to it.

Combos

The lavender, cornflower, oats, and violet clay combo above is fabulous when moistened with lavender hydrosol or a mallow infusion.
A dry mix with cranberry, red clay, rooibos, and oats works beautifully when moistened with a rooibos infusion or rose hydrosol.
Any dry mix with chamomile begs to be moistened with chamomile hydrosol or infusion.

The above 3 are great for normal, dry, sensitive, combination, or mature skin. They also work well for oily skin if left on for 1-2 minutes before being rinsed off.

Do you have any fave combos? Please share - and don't forget to write which skin type you have.