Upon the suggestion of my good friend, Regina, I decided to experiment with some easy and affordable homemade facial care. I’m already a big fan of homemade lip balm and brush cleaner, but at-home skincare was an area I hadn’t previously explored.
So, what’s a girl to do?
A quick Google search, that’s what.
The keywords “homemade face mask oatmeal” yielded 143,000 results, and “homemade face scrub” an overwhelming 308,000.
Luckily, the first couple of sites I clicked on were winners.
My sister, Gretchen, and I tested out two recipes with slight variations to each. Keep reading to learn more about our adventure in homemade masks and scrubs!
Thanks to my vivacious sister, Megan, for taking many of the pictures seen in this post!
Lemon Sugar-Salt Scrub
This scrub uses products you probably already have in your kitchen, and they are by no means expensive ingredients.
This is not a specific recipe, rather, I looked through several lemon face scrub recipes and settled on the following ingredients:
4 tbsp lemon juice
(Lemon to brighten the skin)
1 cup sugar
(Sugar to exfoliate)
2 tbsp salt
(Salt to pull the toxins from the skin)
Directions: Add lemon juice and salt to mixing bowl. Stir a few times, but not enough so that the salt is dissolved.
Then, add sugar and stir.
Here’s what the finished result should look like:
(Feel free to make your scrub thinner or thicker. We chose a thinner consistency.)
(It is up to you how long you choose to leave the scrub on. We left ours on no more than 5 minutes, but you could go much longer, too).
And then, you scrub.
Two Cent tip: For use when washing your face, applying makeup, or as an obnoxious hair accessory, I highly recommend picking up a stretchy headband on the cheap.
My little purple number is from Forever 21, was only $1.00 and also has velcro-which is so helpful, believe me. Available for purchase here.
Gretch is sporting a plain stretchy headband, available pretty much anywhere. Get them in a multi-pack for color coordination purposes 
The results:
-Smooth as a baby’s bottom
While that metaphor is actually quite disturbing when you think about it, it did indeed ring true for our skin. About 30 seconds after we rinsed off the scrub, our faces were ridiculously smooth.
-SENSITIVE SKIN readers beware: Gretch has relatively sensitive skin, and while the scrub didn’t agitate her face, it did agitate her lips. Why did she put it on her lips, you may ask? The situation is as follows:
Me: “Ooh, I bet this would make an awesome lip scrub, too!”
Gretch, without a second thought, slathers it generously all over her lips.
Me: “How does it feel?”
Gretch immediately begins washing it off and screaming in pain. (Note–this is an exaggeration to make a point.)
-Multi-use product-While the scrub did irritate Gretch’s delicate lips, it worked wonders on mine, and didn’t sting in the least. Our hands also felt soft afterwards, so feel free to use this as a face, lip, hand and foot scrub!
-The taste-My sister has a taste for adventure, literally. She licked the lemon scrub and pronounced: “No, this does not taste good,” just in case you were wondering.
-Good till the last drop-We decided to save the remainder of our scrub for future use!
Two Cent Chick rating: 5 Chicks (5 being amazing, 1 being horrible)
Oatmeal Mask
On a bright, soft skin induced high from our lemon scrub experience, Gretch and I eagerly headed back to the kitchen to try out our second recipe.
This recipe comes from Open Eye Health blog, and was the first site I clicked on during my Google search. We ditched the idea of using aloe vera juice, (or finding an aloe vera plant-SERIOUSLY?). And, of course, we were fresh out of raw honey (like most people) . And we figured good old bottled lemon juice would work just as well as half a lemon.
At the last minute, we decided to make two versions of this recipe: one with whole oats and table salt and one with ground oats and kosher salt.
1/4 cup uncooked oats
(Oats for pore cleansing and replenishment of moisture)
2 tbsp lemon juice
(Lemon to brighten the skin)
1 tbsp honey
(Anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial)
1 tbsp salt
(Salt to pull the toxins from the skin)
Directions: Either grind your oats in a coffee grinder (or food processor, whatever you have)…
OR
Then, add lemon juice, salt and honey.
Some action shots:
Here are the finished products:
As you can see, Gretch’s is much more “mask” looking, due to the ground oatmeal. Mine was chunky and quite liquidy, so I kept adding more oats until most of the liquid had been absorbed.
And now, onto the application of the mask:
Well, it’s quite clear from the picture that giant chunks of oatmeal are not meant to stick to, never mind exfoliate/moisturize, one’s face. So basically, my mask did not work out so well.
Gretch’s, on the other hand, fared much better.
Not the most attractive face mask ever, but masks aren’t supposed to be pretty anyways!
I kept my “mask” (aka chunks of oatmeal) on my face for about 10 minutes total. Gretch had some trouble keeping hers on her face…
Yes, unfortunately, her mask began to slip off her face about a minute after putting it on, thus the bowl held under her chin.
The results:
-SENSITIVE SKIN beware AGAIN!-This mask didn’t last very long on Gretch’s face, and it’s not just because it kept falling off. She reported that it began to burn about 30 seconds after application. Not good.
-KITCHEN SINK-Since this mask was so messy, we suggest trying it out strictly in the kitchen, rather than your bathroom. And when you rinse it off your face, the kitchen sink, hopefully with a strainer in it, will be helpful in collecting oatmeal. Unless of course you like finding random bits of oatmeal scattered about your bathroom. Your preference.
-Grind, baby, grind-It’s clear that the whole oatmeal didn’t work, but we think that grinding the oatmeal as much as possible would make for a mask that will actually stay put on your face.
-Skin-My face didn’t feel significantly softer, better moisturized or brighter after using this mask. In fact, after washing this disaster off my face, I followed up with the lemon scrub again!
Two Cent Chick rating: 2 Chicks
Overall, I really enjoyed experimenting with at-home face care. I’ll definitely be trying some new recipes in the future, so look out for those!
Thanks for reading!
Pingback: Homemade Still Reigns Supreme: Lip Scrub! | The Two Cent Chick