I haven't felt this particular frisson of excitement since I wrote about a home-made body scrub I whipped up more than two years ago. :-) That sometimes we find the best beauty products in our very own kitchen is a truth my subconscious mind is well aware of, but my conscious brain does need a reminder every now and then.

You know how it is in winter: dry, flaky skin, your body itches the more you scratch it (there was absolutely no innuendo intended here), and you oftentimes wish you could just be like a snake and shed it... The cold, the absolute lack of humidity in the air, the heating: none of these are particularly beneficial to your skin. So what do you do then? Yeah, you slather your epidermis* with body lotion after you get out of the shower, except when you don't/won't, because despite the fact that you've been heating the bathroom for hours, it still feels more like a Nordic Viking's idea of hell than a proper bathroom.

* I totally ran out of options here... I mean I can't say "skin" five times in a paragraph, now can I? Even if English is more forgiving about it than Hungarian.

Finally you just get fed up, and decide to raid your kitchen in the hopes of finding some remedy to your skin's atrocious condition. You get creative and you concoct the perfect solution to your predicament.

Voilà. Binary Star Studios present Izar's Inexpensive and Invigorating Body Scrub that, despite being just a simple body scrub, will put an end to all your skin troubles at once.

• Take a (clean!) vessel of any kind. It can be a simple cup or, if you wish to make a bigger batch at a time and store the leftovers for future use, a glass jar.
  
  
• Fill your cup with sugar and add a spoonful of olive oil. Mix the two until the oil coats the the sugar thoroughly.
  
  
• Add a teaspoonful of ground coffee and a teaspoonful of cinnamon powder. Mix well with the sugar. (I used my Dad's precious Arabica blend, but what he doesn't know won't get me in trouble, right? :-D)
  
  
• Add a drop of sweet-orange essential oil or, if you're lucky like me and are in the possession of Alverde's Blood Orange and Maracuja Body Oil, then add a teaspoonful of that.
  
  
• Now take some time and mix the whole thing as thoroughly as you can. When you deem your body scrub to be ready, just march into your bathroom, take a shower and then go over your whole body with this deliciously scented scrub, then rinse.
  
  
• When you're done, marvel at your brand new skin that doesn't itch, isn't dry and flaky, smells like a confectionery and is smooth and conditioned thanks to the oils in the scrub.
  

If you don't really like the scent of coffee, you can leave it out or use less, but I really do encourage you to use it as it adds some extra, non-melting scrubby bits to the mix. Then again, because the sugar is coated in oil, it melts much-much slower than it would otherwise.

Keep in mind though that this stuff is not for the faint of heart: it does have a very intense smell and is pretty rough on your body, but it does wonders to skin that's been tortured by winter weather. You can store it in an airtight jar in your fridge, just make sure you don't contaminate it:

Don't scoop it out with your wet hands! Water will make the sugar melt, not to mention provide a great breeding ground for germs. Use a small spoon for that purpose, one you can even store in the jar if you want.

Well, that's it! Of course, you can get creative too and come up with all sorts of variations for this: you can change the base and use something more gentle, like ground almonds or walnuts, or you can add different spices to the mix, or leave everything as it is, except use less coffee and add some cocoa-powder. Just try not to use anything that has water in it: you really don't want to end up with a jarful of totally useless sugar syrup, now do you? ;-)

Good luck, and if you have your own home-made wonder-products, do share them with us!  

For many reasons there's a blush creeping up my cheeks while writing this post. You see, a few months ago I decided I would share all the knowledge I had gathered during the time in my life when I was desperately searching for information on the various (and sometimes downright hazardous) effects of cosmetic ingredients and also supplement my own personal experiences on each subject.
My first, and so far only post, was about the effects of honey (and in some part that of chamomile) on our hair, skin and general health. After that, I was greatly distracted by other, seemingly more important, and let's face it, definitely more exciting matters such as the prospect of ordering more makeup from Everyday Minerals and then later with the Hungary Month Series.
A few days ago, however, a lady from the US sent me a lovely e-mail inquiring about when I am planning to continue above mentioned post because she was curious about the hair lightening properties of honey. I was ashamed of myself for abandoning this topic and the series for so long, even though when I started I felt it my duty to share all I know with my precious readers.
Therefore, I'm hereby giving you part two of my experiences with honey. Enjoy!

Important notice: caution should be excercised when using honey on your skin. Those of us who are allergic to pollens or those who experience allergic reactions after eating honey might find that their skin cannot tolerate it either and breaks out in hives and rashes!

In Part One, I told you about honey's many properties (and the scinece behind them), which were:

1. hair and skin lightener (when it comes in contact with water a small amount of hydrogen-peroxide is produced)
2. moisturizer (only in diluted form!)
3. disinfectant

In Part Two, I shall endeavor to give your my first hand experiences, especially when it comes to its uses on our hair.
My reader was especially curious about how honey affects our hair and that's exactly what I wanted to know last spring when I decided that lighter locks would suit me better during the summer. I started researching and found a great article in which someone wrote about her experiences with honey as a natural hair lightener. It was where I first read about the previously mentioned chemical reaction and could even view some very convincing pictures taken before and after the procedure. Now, after almost a year, I cannot find the site anymore, but here's the original recipe that I tried and used successfully several times.

1. 1 part honey
2. 2 parts conditioner
3. some clingfilm to wrap your head in with

Mix your honey with the conditioner, apply the mixture onto your freshly washed (and still damp) hair and wrap it up into some kind of plastic which will NOT let your scalp and hair dry for a good while. Leave this mixture on for as long as you can: the lady who wrote the article accidentally left it on for 8 hours (and there was a definite change in the shade of her hair afterwards) but you are allowed to wash it off sooner and repeat the process later. Actually, one treatment will probably not be enough: I certainly needed more than one as the process described above will not miraculously turn your hair many shades lighter.

You shouldn't expect instant change though: the best you can hope for is perhaps a shade lighter hair after one treatment. I could best compare the result to when you first spend some time under the sun in the spring after months of confinement and in the afternoon (or evening) you look into the mirror and happily discover that your hair has become lighter and shinier. Minus the shiny part, of course, as this is still hydrogen-peroxide, just is smaller quantities and this is why you should take extra care to deep condition your hair afterwards. See my post on a particularly good home made olive oil conditioner.

After several applications, my hair did actually become lighter: when I met my best friend after many weeks of being away from each other she remarked at how my hair was much lighter than she had remembered. There is, however, a price to pay for everything in life and I too had to admit to myself that no matter how much I had tried to moisturize my hair it was still frizzier and coarser than before. All through spring I was sporting my several shades lighter hair and then I had it cut short (because I didn't want to suffer from my insane amount of hair in 42 °C degrees): the difference was noticeable to the touch.

So much about honey's hair lightening properties then. Other things you could use are:

1. lemon (Put lemon juice on your hair for an hour or so and enhance its effects by sitting out into the sun.)
   
2. the sun (Bathing your hair in the sun will lighten it, especially if you wash your hair before it and dry it like that. It will regain its natural shape and color which is why I can usually be found on the terrace of our summer cottage in the spring. :-)
   
3. cinnamon (I haven't tried this method yet but it should be interesting, especially if you want to acquire a slight copper tint. I would advise you to add some honey to the mix just to be sure.)

Honey can also be used to lighten our complexion, especially when we wish to make freckles, age spots (a.k.a. liver spots or sun spots) or scars less noticeable. I would recommend using it in conjunction with lactic acid which is also a great weapon when battling above mentioned beauty enemies. Lactic acid can be bought in drugstores in its purest form or can be found in our kitchens in the form of milk, yoghurt, cream, sour cream and kefir. You can easily whip up a complexion lightening mask of any of these dairy products by adding honey and some thickening agent like flour or oat bran (another wonderful stuff for your skin). After several uses of this mask you should see freckles, spots and scars fading and your skin being moisturized and radiant.


Honey's disinfectant qualities are put to use by people all the time: because of the hydrogen-peroxide that forms when honey comes in contact with water, using honey to disinfect small cuts and wounds is the next best thing in cases when you don't have any proper disinfectant nearby. You just need to apply honey onto the cut in a thin layer without even adding water as the moisture content of your skin (or blood in worse cases) will be enough to start the chemical reaction.

If you have a sore throat, why not just drink a cup of tea with honey and lemon? That should get rid of the bacteria in your throat in no time which is why I'm assidiously drinking barrels of the stuff as I was struck down by some evil combination of the common cold and my usual allergy a few days ago.

It even occurred to me that you could use undiluted (!) honey as a dressing over particularly stubborn cases of acne. Its antibacterial qualities will help disinfect the area over the offending zit and because it's undiluted it will also dry the area like nobody's business and draw out the acne. (See Part One to find out why!)


Whew! That's about all I wanted to tell you I guess, and now it's your turn to call our attention to any methods or uses of honey I did not mention here. What do you use honey for? Let us know!  

There's a reason why blond women use chamomile, lemon juice and honey to enhance the color of their hair and why many non-blondes also turn to these natural substances to achieve slight changes in their hair color. It's just that sometimes these reasons get mixed up and I suddenly come across innocent questions such as "Will chamomile help me lighten my hair?" or "Do you think I can use pure honey to moisturize my hair?" The answer to both questions is a short and simple "No". If you want to know why, then go on and read this post.



Let's start with the first question. Chamomile, as many other herbs, can be used as a dye but it does not have the slightest chemical properties which would enable it to remove the original color of our hair. What it is capable of is adding a golden hue to lighter hair colors such as blond, light-brown or red. (It won't show up on darker colors.) In order to achieve this effect, we simply need to make a strong brew using a mug of water and at least three handfuls of chamomile flower, then thoroughly soak our hair in the warm liquid and leave it one for at least an hour. (Hair is preferably wrapped in a towel.) I tried this a few years ago and my hair acquired a pretty golden sheen which looked great in the summer. Be careful though: if you use too much chamomile or leave it on for too long (or do both) you might end up with a yellowish tint in your mane.


So now we know that chamomile does not lighten our hair. Now honey on the other hand... Okay, so what do we know about honey? Besides being jam-packed with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, it also has two very peculiar properties.

1. When honey comes in contact with water, a small amount of hydrogen peroxide is formed which might be the reason why we drink warm tea with honey when we have a sore throat (H₂O₂ is a strong disinfectant), or why we can actually use it to lighten our hair and skin. (Hydrogen peroxide! It does ring a bell, doesn't it? :-) In honey, H₂O₂ is present in a low concentration only, which is why it is much less harmful than the substance used in hair salons.
   
   
   C₆H₁₂O₆ + H₂O + O₂ → C₆H₁₂O₇ + H₂O₂
   
   
   
   
2. Honey in a pure and undiluted form is a very drying substance and should not be applied to hair or skin. (I once put it on my face as a mask and could not slather on enough moisturizer afterwards.)
   
   Honey has a low water activity which means that even those few water molecules it contains are associated with the sugars in it and thus, honey has osmotic qualities. Osmosis is the passage of a liquid through a semi-permeable membrane from a solution of low solute concentration to a solution with high solute concentration. In the end, we will have the same concentration of liquid on both sides of the membrane.
   
   As a result of the osmotic effect, when you put honey on your skin, your skin will act as a semi-permeable membrane, on the other side of which there are the lower layers of your skin, full of water. Because of its osmotic effect, honey will draw water to itself from your skin, leaving it dry, wrinkled and possibly even irritated.
   
   When, however, honey is diluted at a minimum of a 1 to 10 ratio, the end result is a wonderfully moisturizing substance. (In this respect, honey works pretty much the same way as glycerin does. If you see glycerin among the first four or five ingredients used in a product than that means it will probably dry your skin instead of moisturizing it.) Adding a few drops of honey to your facial mask or hair conditioner is therefore one of the best things you can do for your skin. You can also mix a spoonful of honey with your bath water and even add a little milk and almond oil.

Now you know the science behind the beneficial properties of honey and most likely you already have a few ideas about how to put this wonderful treasure of Nature to use. In Part Two of this split post I'll share my personal experiences with using honey as a hair lightener and I'll also talk about some of its other uses.

Lots of love to all of you,
Izar  

A few weeks ago my Dad got himself a new razor, and upon using it he started experiencing a burning, itching sensation on his chin accompanied by redness and dry skin. He came to me asking for something that would alleviate his symptoms, and I immediately started searching in my vast collection of skin products. As someone who has dermographic skin (more on that in a future post) I was familiar with his problem and long years of battling red, itching, irritated skin prompted me to give him a small bottle of Weleda’s Calendula Baby Oil. It wasn’t really that particular product that I had confidence in (though of course I do trust Weleda very much) but more of the fact that it is an unscented, PH-neutral fatty oil which makes it one of the least irritating substances I know of.

I could have given him plain and simple jojoba oil (or any other oil or butter for that matter) instead and the results would have been the same: redness gone, skin calmed down in a matter of minutes. That is simply because they’re all substances which do not produce any considerable chemical reactions when coming in contact with one’s skin, and they are the gentlest, most neutral substances available.

During my teenage years I once decided to wax my chin and the area above my lip with sugar wax strips at home (I was young and foolish, all right?). It is one thing that probably all my neighbors were immediately informed of my attempts through excessive curse words (*blushes*) screamed at the top of my lungs. Another thing, however, was that the “treated” area turned into a real exhibition of swollen, red, burning and utterly painful skin, a reminder of my stupidity, and would not calm down no matter what I tried. (And I had several tricks up my sleeve, believe me.)

For example, I had heard somewhere that lavender oil had calming and soothing properties which I was desperately in need of, so I mixed some lavender essential oil and jojoba oil and applied it to the sore area. If anything, that made my skin hurt even more.

Then I remembered that I had some Aloe Vera juice at home which is often described as some miraculous stuff, capable of improving any skin condition. I put some on, screamed some more and that’s when my skin started to look truly horrible. (Aloe Vera has a slightly acidic PH which in cases of irritation may prove to be too much.)

So there I was, abandoned by everyone else’s Holy Grails, desperate to transform myself into something presentable before the weekend was over. I had previously washed off both treatments and my skin stated to feel dry and parched. After the disastrous results I got from the “gentle” stuff, I was not much inclined to apply a not-so-gentle moisturizer, so I shrugged my shoulders and slathered on some jojoba oil hoping for the best and not really expecting any improvements in my condition anytime soon. I went to bed unassumingly and woke up in the morning only to find that the tortured skin on my face decided to forget about the whole incident overnight and had mostly forgiven me for the inhumane treatment. Since then I have used several kinds of oils and butters successfully in times of skin emergencies. (Sweet almond, olive, and apricot kernel oils, cocoa butter and even plain unsalted butter when nothing else was available.)

This, then, is how I discovered the healing power of oils/butters and how I came to realize that even wonder-products might prove to be too harsh when dealing with irritated skin, and also that the gentlest, most soothing thing is probably sitting on every family’s kitchen counter.

Things to consider when you choose a product to soothe irritated skin:

• should be PH-neutral, unscented (this means no essential oils for you!), as gentle as possible
• should not form a chemical reaction with skin, should not be abrasive (well, duh!)

Let’s look at some examples. When my Dad asked for a healing ointment I did not have jojoba oil at hand, but I had several kinds of Weleda body oils to choose from. These are the things I considered:

1. Sea Buckthorn Body Oil (Read more about this oil here!):
   Definitely not the best choice since it contains sea buckthorn extract which is high in Vitamin C, an acid itself. (I once treated my sore nose with this stuff: never again, as the song goes…)
   
   
2. Wildrose Body Oil (Read my review here!):
   Contains rose essential oil which is a possible skin irritant and which, by accident, also has a high Vitamin C content. It’s not a very masculine scent either…
   
   
3. Calendula Baby Oil:
   This stuff is pure sesame oil in which calendula flower petals were soaked. It is therefore PH-neutral (not much vitamin C) and has hardly any scent except that of the sesame oil, but it possesses the healing properties of Calendula flowers, thus an obvious choice.

 

After having so much success with olive oil, I decided to use it on my body too. I concocted a delicious body scrub made up of ingredients that anyone may find in their kitchen.

Sweet And Rich Body Scrub:

- 4 spoonfuls of sugar

- 4 spoonfuls of extra virgin olive oil

- 1 teaspoonful of honey

- 1 teaspoonful of cocoa powder (just to make it even more yummy)

Mix the ingredients in a bowl and apply after showering.

Actually, what I did was put the ingredients into the bowl, take it into the bathroom with me, and just before using it, I mixed the ingredients with my hand 'cause I didn't have a plastic spoon at home, and I didn't want to use a metal one.

This is a really effective scrub, as it has one of Nature's the most beneficial oils in it, and also contains honey, which hydrates the skin, and sugar, which is an excellent polisher. Come to think of it, the added cocoa powder is not just there for the fun: cocoa poweder is said to have a very good effect on skin, it contains vitamins and minerals which are essential for a healthy complexion.

Have fun scrubbing!

 

This Saturday I decided to try something new. I heard many times what miracles hair treatments and masks are claimed to do to damaged and over-processed hair but I was always sceptical about them. After all, you wash your hair, put the treatment on, leave it on for at least 20 minutes and then finally you wash the whole thing down. Also, we are often told that hair is basically a dead thing and nothing can actually penetrate it, not to mention stay in it, after being washed and rinsed. So yeah, as I said I was sceptical.

Not any more though. I concocted a recipe cosisting of 3 spoonfuls of extra virgin olive oil, one teaspoonful of honey, one drop of rosemary and ylang-ylang oil each and I added what was left of my LUSH 'Retread' hair conditioner. Then, I applied it to my hair, wrapped it up in a warm towel, and let it work for an hour. After the time was up, I gently washed it again once and applied conditioner then rinsed it one more time. After patting it dry with a towel I even applied some more olive oil to the ends and smoothed my palms over my head. Finally, I let it dry naturally without blow-drying it.

My hair is middle length, brown, wavy (and sometimes on the brink of curly), and overall it is ridiculously difficult to tame. Well not anymore. As it kept drying it became curly without any frizz and shiny without being heavy and limp. It was (and still is after two days) perfectly managable and ultra-soft.

All in all, it has been a surprisingly pleasant experience and I'm pretty certail I'll be treating my hair with this mixture from now on.