Natural Skin Care Recipes

Welcome to my Hub on Natural Skin Care. This Hub presents several natural skin care recipes: natural facials, natural body scrubs, natural hair treatments, and natural acne remedies.

The recipes here are adapted from my website on Natural Skin Care. These recipes all came from a lady friend of mine who has personally used these recipes for years. Everything here has been tried and tested and works great!

Below are a few natural fruit facial recipes that my friend has personally used and have found to be extremely effective. As always, with any food product, it is best if you strive to purchase natural, organic products to use for these recipes. If organic products are not available in your area, take care to carefully wash the fruits present in these facial recipes to ensure that no pesticides are left on them when you use them. Also, if you are allergic to any foods, do not use them in your natural skin care products. These natural skin care recipes work well for all skin types.

Lemon and Yeast Facial

1-2 tsp active dry yeast*

1 Tbsp lemon juice

Mix active dry yeast with lemon juice until it forms a paste. Spread on face and neck and allow to dry. Rinse off and moisturize. This facial is the best I've found for eliminating blackheads, shrinking pores and generally making your skin glow - and it's so gentle you could do it every day! After falling in love with this natural facial I eventually threw out my old facials and masks that were cluttering up my bathroom (and no longer being used).

*active dry yeast is sold in the baking section of most stores. It's best to refrigerate after opening.

Fruit Facial

1/4 avocado* or 1/8 papaya** or 2-3 strawberries***

Mash fruit with a fork. Apply to your face and neck. You will probably want to lay down with a towel under your head, as this mask does not dry on your skin. Rest for 5-20 minutes (the longer the better), rinse and moisturize.

Don't know what to do with those overripe bananas? Mash 1/3 of a banana that you weren't going to eat anyway, mix it with a little milk or yogurt or sour cream and apply to your skin as directed above.

For other variations on this home spa treatment, mix an egg or yogurt with the mashed fruit. For more dairy-based recipes, see the Natural Facial Recipes With Dairy section of my website.

*avocado is an excellent treatment for dry, mature or dehydrated skin

**papaya enzymes are excellent for normal, oily, or combination skin

***good for all skin types - the strawberry mask tingles a bit, this is normal

Natural Body Scrub

Making a delicious salt or sugar scrub is the easiest thing in the world. They make great gifts, too!

1/2 cup fine sea salt (table salt) or sugar

Mix ingredients in a glass jar. Use a jar that has extra room so it is big enough to mix everything without creating a mess. You could also use a mixing bowl and then transfer everything to a jar or jars for storage. I like jojoba oil for it's non-greasy quality and neutral scent, but any oil can be used.

Apple Face & Body Scrub

1/3 cup apple juice

Mix ingredients well. Apply scrub to your face in gentle, circular motions, and then all over your body. Rinse in a warm shower. Malic acid in the apple juice and lactic acid in the milk will loosen dead skin cells; oat flour and sugar will also exfoliate and honey will moisturize and soften the skin.

For more recipes, visit my page on Natural Body Treatments.

Vinegar hair and scalp treatment

A hair stylist once told me that the best way to get rid of product buildup in your hair is to fill a bowl or pan with vinegar*, lay back so your hair is in the bowl or pan, and stay there for 5-10 minutes. Wash your hair and condition as usual. A good washing should eliminate the vinegar smell, and your hair will feel great! This an excellent treatment for your scalp, too, because vinegar restores the PH balance of our skin and a proper PH balance is really important for good skin health. So if your scalp is itchy or flaky, massage some vinegar into it while your hair is soaking. Be careful to avoid getting vinegar in your eyes, though!

*I recommend apple cider vinegar

For more recipes, please visit my page on Natural Hair Treatments.

Topical Treatments

Steam your face with a few drops of Tea Tree Oil or lemon juice - both are effective at fighting bacteria that cause inflammations. For steaming, you may want to use 100% strength Tea Tree Oil, just don't open your eyes in the steam, and only add a few drops (like 3-5) at a time until you find an amount that you are comfortable with.

Add 1 tsp of honey to your favorite fruit facial recipe - honey is another natural anti-bacterial. It's so effective, in fact, that when archeologists found jars of honey in Egyptian Tombs the honey was still preserved - much to their amazement. In studying the properties of honey, scientists found that it causes bacteria to implode leaving the honey unchanged. So bacteria cannot survive in contact with honey, which is why those jars of honey survived for thousands of years in the pharaoh's tombs.

Please visit my page for more Natural Acne Treatments.

If you like the recipes here, please visit http://www.fruitfacial.net for more recipes and information on natural skin care.

There's also a great web page at ThriftyFun on natural skin care.

If you have other good websites on natural skin care, please leave the URL in a comment on this page, and I will add it to this section.

And if you have any good recipes of your own, let me know - I'll gladly add them to this hub.