Homemade Face Mask

 Homemade face masks?  Not an item typically seen on a food blog...

Last month I was contacted by a publisher and offered a free book to review: Peggy Kotsopoulos' Must Have Been Something I Ate.  

 

I was specifically asked to prepare this face mask and share it with you. 

Seeing as how my friends and I used to make our own perfume and beauty products back during our school years, I was ALL OVER THIS.  I love DIY cosmetics!

And Peggy, the book's author, is a holistic nutritionist.  Her book is jam-packed with astonishing and helpful information, designed to be a girlfriend's guide to helping our bodies overcome ailments (PMS, bloating, sleep issues, anxiety, etc.) using the power of food. 

Her recipe for the face mask is simple:  combine the ingredients (buttermilk, avocado, banana, and kiwi) in a blender, apply the mask to your face, and wash it off after 20 minutes.*  

Peggy writes that buttermilk has alpha-hydroxyacid (AHA) which rejuvenates the skin and is often used in professional peels.  The avocado's high fat content and antioxident vitamins A and E soften the skin.  The banana's potassium rejuvenates the skin, and the kiwi is also high in antioxidents and Vitamins C and E. 

 
Face Mask Ingredients:  Avocado, Kiwi, Banana, and Buttermilk

 
Peggy doesn't give an exact measurement for each ingredient, so I just winged it on the amounts.   

 This can definitely be made in the blender.  I used my food processor, pureeing the fruits first and then adding a tablespoon of buttermilk.

Then I applied it.  It felt a bit as though, in a moment of desperation to get my baby to eat, I smeared his food all over my face to distract him from the spoon heading toward his mouth.  The scent of bananas isn't my favorite, so I had to mentally get past the smell (which truly was not bad.  It's just me.).

So what were the results?

I'll first say this:  I'm very skeptical of cosmetics' claims.  I like to be smarter than the brand's marketing team, whom I envision encircling a conference room table drinking Starbucks and eating Ferrero Rochers, throwing out words like "youthful", "firmer", "tighter", and "glowing", trying to create a label that will appeal to the raging vanity of women.  And I very much appreciate that this mask was made by me from real ingredients in my real kitchen and therefore had no claims or labels.

So I'm telling you this with a straight face, restraining myself from using hyperboles and over-the-top adjectives.  This mask was...great.   About 10 minutes into the dry time, my skin began to tingle and burn a bit.  (In a good way.)  The AHA in the buttermilk was getting after my pores, gnoshing away at over-the-hill skin cells.  After rinsing the mask from my skin (I eventually went ahead and slathered it on my neck, too), I was rather shocked to discover that those pesky pores near the sides of my nose were noticeably smaller.  

I've used expensive products in the past that cannot hold a candle to the effectiveness of this mask.  My skin felt smooth and moisturized, and after I applied my regular daytime moisturizer, my face looked as good as it did after spending a week on the beach in Mexico (salt water and salt air are a magical skin combination). 

I placed the leftover mask in a jelly jar in the fridge and will be using again it very soon (not sure how long it will keep...).  And when I need to make more, it will be fun to fiddle with the ingredient amounts, adding more buttermilk when my skin needs a good AHA scrubbing, more avocado when my skin is on the dry side, etc. 

Here's the ratio of ingredients I used to make this particular mask:

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Homemade Face Mask
1/3 small banana
1/2 kiwi
1/4 avocado
1 tablespoon buttermilk

Blend first three ingredients together in blender or food processor until smooth.  Then add the buttermilk and process for a few more seconds until incorporated.  
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Peggy has many more DIY cosmetics in her book including lip gloss, a body moisturizer, and even a cellulite treatment.   She also has a tooth whitener, which I jumped to make like a kid on a trampoline.

Here's what I used.

I mixed together one small mashed strawberry with about 1/2 teaspoon of the baking powder.  Effervescent things start to happen.

Then I brushed my teeth with it!  It tastes kind of crazy, especially since I'm so used to my minty toothpaste.

 

I can't say that I noticed a difference in the color of my teeth right away, but I'm going to keep trying to get rid of these danged coffee stains.

The long and short of it is:  I highly recommend this book.  Peggy is very straightforward in her explanations of how we can use food to our healing benefit.   She writes in "girlfriend-ese", explaining otherwise complex things in simple, urban terms.  (She does throw in a few curse words now and then, so keep that in mind...especially if you have young readers in your house.)

The book is about $20 and can be purchased from Amazon.com.

*Please use common-sense caution; if your skin is at all sensitive, please test the mask on a small area of inconspicuous skin first before using it on your face and neck.  The tingling/burning "peel" action of the mask is very noticeable and is definitely a sign that it is working.  My skin was a bit pinkish immediately after I rinsed the mask from my face/neck/decolletage area, but was back to normal within 15 minutes.