Spring Face cream - fresh as a baby

I am exceptionally proud of this baby.

I have combination skin, oily in the T zone and dry everywhere else. Also particularly prone to a very oily nose, meaning and constantly by wiping it like I had some kind of drug affliction.

I was really scared the first time I made face cream, I have sensitive skin as well so was almost positive I'd wake up in the morning with a face like a blow fish. But I never did, the most I uncovered in my experience was that my face doesn't like Olive oil, my body is absolutely fine with it but my face wasn't having it at all. Almost immediately I started to go red. I'm dark skinned woman, that is not an easy thing to do. It calmed down the moment I washed it off though.

The recipe below is my current Spring face cream, I change things up a little per season as my face has different requirements in reaction to the weather.

Your Kit (don't use the ones you use for food, pick some new cheap ones up from Poundland or whatever your equivalent shop is.)

This should take you 1 hour or less if you have all of your kit to hand.

• 3 clean tubs 40ml or bigger
• Kitchen scale
• Small old / cheap saucepan
• Pyrex measuring jug
• Measuring water jug
• Measuring spoons
• 2 x Spatulas
• Electric whisk (there is no joy in doing this by hand)
• 5g Beeswax pellets (or equivalent)
• 2g Mango butter
• 4g Aloe Vera butter
• 35g Sunflower oil
• 1/8 tsp Neem oil
• 1/2 tsp Vitamin E
• 1/4 tsp Glycerin
• 35ml Distilled water
• 3 drops Lavender Essential Oil
• 2 drops Frankincense Essential Oil
• 1 drop Cedarwood Essential Oil
• 5 drops Geranium Essential Oil
• Paper towels
• Baby wipes
• Separate kitchen sponge

Directions

1. Place your Pyrex jug on the scale and measure the Wax, use the measuring spoons to scoop out the Mango Butter and Aloe Butter but use the scale to measure them, pour in the Sunflower oil
   
2. Put about in inch of water into you saucepan and turn it to about 4 (if your gauge goes up to 6), when you've done this a few times you can just put it on high
3. Stir slowly it will help everything melt quicker
4. In the meantime - measure out your distilled water with the water measuring jug, or alternatively, boil some water and put more than you need into the jug and let it cool (some will evaporate, you can measure out the mount of water you need later
5. Stir the mixture until all the wax has melted, it will be the last to melt
   
6. Take the jug out of the pan and leave on the side for a few minutes, then put the Neem in and stir. Neem oil can solidify so shake and warm the bottle in advance
7. Cool down the jug by running some cold tap water on the outside of the jug.
8. Put the Vitamin E in and stir
9. Put the jug in the fridge for about 20 minutes or less, you want to take it out when the mixture looks close to warm Vaseline
10. Mix the Glycerin into the water
11. Get your whisk ready
12. Take the jug out of the fridge, and start to whisk it on low
    
13. With your other hand SLOWLY pour the water into the mixture whilst constantly whisking. This step alone can take a few minutes, if you rush it then your water can't be bound to the oil - I learned the hard way
14. Once mixed, take your spatula and wipe around the jug making sure you pick up any water splashes, also use the spatula to sweep the bottom of the jug just in case the whisk didn't catch all of the oil mix. Use the OFF whisk to scrape off the spatula so that you keep as much mixture as possible in the jug
    
15. Put your Essential oil drops in - you can change this to whatever works for your face, just keep the amounts roughly the same.
16. Whisk again for another 2 minutes and you're done.
    
17. Scoop your mixture into the 3 different pots, you'll use one pot per month. Separating them keeps germs down.
    
18. My tubs are large at 100ml each so the amounts look tiny.
19. You'll have excess cream inside the jug and on the spatula's, just rub it on your body rather than wasting it
20. Wipe down everything with the paper towels, and then with the baby wipes
21. Then wash the equipment as usual with your separate sponge

This should last you for just about 3 months, you can feel when you're getting to the end of your creams life cycle, it's subtle but you'll know when it's time to make a new batch. You will only need a pea sized amount morning and night. I'd highly recommend looking up all the ingredients on https://draxe.com/

Thin to Thick - Hey JASON...

I have found that some conditioners that are supposed to provide protein are really just light touch detanglers. JASON Thin to Thick is not one of those.

I wanted to give myself a few days after doing a co-wash with it before writing. At first I felt like it just made my new growth soft and that was nice but nothing to write home about. As the days went on though, my usually fine hair just felt fat for want of a better word. It felt like I had about double the amount of hair on my head.

By the 4th day I realise that actually my hair now needs significantly more moisture than it usually does. That's on me rather than JASON, where I thought it may just be a light tough protein conditioner I used it when my hair only needed a top up of protein. This is much more like a reconstructor.

I am pleased with it, but I think the next time I use it I'll have to follow it up with a moisturising conditioner for balance, or alternatively add a couple of drops of Calendula essential oil when applying. Calendula is seriously moisturising - I only use it when I'm in real need like when I've had a bad cold for a week and haven't been able to wash my hair. Over moisturising can be as bad if not worse than over loading hair with protein.

I only got the Conditioner but they also do a Shampoo, a Scalp Elixir, and a Volume Spray. Using this really reminded me about timing with hair. I'm much better at listening to my hair now but maybe I was a bit too eager to use my new sparkling product. I'll do better.

This weekend I'll do another hot oil scalp massage before my deep condition. My hair is getting rally curly now so I really need to spend more time detangling gently, it's so easy at night to just want  to get through it, put on my head tie and get on with my meditation.

Rosewood oil - my secret weapon?

Rosewood Essential Oil!

I don't know why this works but it does. As I've been making my cosmetics over the past 2 years or so, I've steadily been stocking up on my essential oils. I think I may have about 20 or so at the moment, I'll write about them all at some point I'm sure.

As I'm naturally curious, I've been adding a drop or 2 to my shampoo or conditioner (after doing my research) to see what it would add to my hair. Some of my favourites for wash day are:

1. Rosewood (obviously)
2. Rosemary - used most frequently
3. Lavender - go to fix all if I don't know what I need
4. Cedarwood - for those itchy / painful scalp days
5. Calendula - by far the easiest way to make your hair drink water fast

Now my Lady Rosewood is a tricky tricky EO. Mostly because I can't find anywhere on the internet that says it does what it does to my hair. I did however find a few mentions of it being endangered and to use Ho Wood oil as a replacement, but all of those articles are from several years ago, and when I bought it, it wasn't that expensive, so I'm hoping I haven't hurt a tree somewhere.

The best I can find is that it's an Astringent so if I work that out in my head, that means it will flatten the cuticles. So I can say, I use Rosewood oil to straighten and strengthen my hair. At 3 weeks post relaxer that was only 75% done in the first place and an awful lot of massaging rosemary oil into my scalp, I had a lot more curl than I was used to, so I thought it's time to put some Rosewood in because I remembered the first and only time I used it, I got a lot of shine and it just felt strong. So here I went again.

It was my co wash day so I put 2 drops in my hand with my JASON Aloe Vera and worked it through, by the time I finished I thought I could feel the hair was straighter but it was just me. I put a grip in it and showered, then rinsed it out with luke warm water. It was probably only sitting in for about 2 minutes. Let me tell you, my hair as I was finger combing it, maybe 2 were left on my hands. Audrey Davis-Sivasothy says that healthy hair will only have about 20 broken strands a day (I think it's a day). These days I'm about 10 in the morning and 15-20 at night which I can tell you is so much better than I was back in the day, when I was brushing my hair and cleaning countless strands out of it.

The ends were so straight and strong that they barely held a curl that first night, which I know sounds counterintuitive but the initial electric shock style hair wears off. As the days went by it was much easier to style, the texlaxed curls and new growth were now just waves. This stayed this way through to Sunday when I washed and deep conditioned it. And I forgot to take a picture before I did - sorry - but I will do next time.

So even now as I'm air drying my hair, the roots are only slightly puffier than they ought to be at this point. I don't even want to put Lady Rosewood into my hair oil or leave in conditioner for fear that my hair gets to used to it.

I did a lovely new scalp massage today which I will write up later, and just added 2 drops of Cedarwood to my conditioner. If anyone ANYONE else has used Rosewood, please let me know how it worked out for you.

Until next time.

Face Wash - Well saved money

I love my face wash and my face wash loves me!

I think I started making face wash a little over a year ago now, and have changed the recipe several times. For a good little while it used to be coconut oil based - sounds strange but it worked just fine. The only reason why I changed it up to a spray was because I didn't like dipping my finger in the pot. I suppose I could have gotten a squeezey tube, which I may well try out in the future but for now. This spray is my baby.

So the tools are as follows

1. 50ml Spray bottle
2. Castile Soap
3. Distilled / filtered water
4. Essential oils - Lavender, Tea Tree, Geranium, Cedar wood.
5. Glycerin
6. Scale
7. A small funnel
   

Right, now this is pretty straight forward as things go.

1. Make sure your spray bottle is clean.
2. Place the funnel in the bottle and put it on the scale
3. Pour 15ml of the Castile soap SLOWLY
4. Add just a drop of Glycerin
5. Add 2 drops of Lavender
6. 2 drops of Tea Tree
7. 1 drop of Cedarwood
8. 1 drop of Geranium
9. Then pour 35 ml of distilled water into the bottle
10. Put the spray cap on
11. Shake it like a polaroid picture
12. Spray it a few times into the sink
13. You're good to go

This lasts me for about 3 weeks in the Winter and 2 weeks in the Summer. I never finish the bottle but you get a feel for when all of the anti bad things the essential oil is for is used up. The whole process can be done in less than 5 minutes if you have a steady hand so I don't mind making it frequently. And my rough calculations add up to about 50p per bottle. But it will be much cheaper when I buy my new giant bottle of Castile soap - it will then work out to be roughly 20p per bottle.

Quick calculation of 20p every two weeks is £5.20. Even if I made a new wash every week it would work out to be £10.40.

So yes I save my money, and I can ramp up or down what I'm washing my face with, for example if I have some enlarged pore action going on, I can add more Cedarwood, if my skin is feeling a little dry in the Winter, I can add more Geranium.

I've listed below why I've added the ingredients I have. The essential oils do have several other uses.

1. Castile Soap - It's a soap... it clears all the dirt / pollution away
2. Distilled / filtered water - not tap water, there's just less chance of it carrying germs into your mix
3. Lavender EO - For it's antimicrobial and antioxidant loveliness, it's good for eczema sufferers as well. Won't dry the skin out and is anti inflammatory.
4. Tea Tree - It kills germs dead! As far as I can tell anyway, I even add this to my laundry. Great for spots including acne
5. Cedarwood - one of my favourites, it balances sebum production and closes the pores, so my oily parts aren't so oily and my dry parts aren't so dry. It's an anti inflammatory as well
6. Geranium - a staple in the collection. Toner, wrinkle reducer, bug repellent, and helps to fade scars from those old but not entirely forgotten spots. I don't wear foundation so the need for a balanced skin tone is a must
7. Glycerine - It's a humectant, so it draws moisture to the skin. I have combination skin and still use this.

If you want to try making this yourself, please test on a small area first and read all about Essential Oils and Castile soap so you can make your own decisions as to whether you're comfortable with them.

The websites I'm on frequently are

• https://draxe.com/
• https://www.organicfacts.net/
• https://mothernaturesgoodies.co.uk/

Detangling - without distressing my tresses

Cyclomethicone is a silicone found in a lot of leave in conditioners. If you haven't seen it listed then you've definitely seen Dimethicone. Dimethicone is the one that you need a SLS shampoo to wash out as it builds up on the hair. Cyclomethicone on the other hand is a little more friendly, it can evaporate and is easily washed out with co-wash.

I have a bottle of Cyclomethicone because I use it when making lotions, it adds a really good silky feeling without leaving your skin feeling oily. So of course, knowing that worked, I tried putting it in my leave in conditioner (JASON mixed with water and essential oils). The first few times I put too much in and my hair just wasn't liking it. It felt consistently dehydrated.

Then I made a dry oil body spray using oil and Cyclo, so I thought a touch on the hair might work to detangle - no, no it doesn't.

It was only on Sunday after I washed my hair and realised that my hair is now needing assistance in detangling again, (is it growing faster is it just me? I have been religiously adding Rosemary oil to conditioner...) I thought maybe if I just put a couple of drops on my hands and in between my fingers and run it through my hair as it's air drying, that might work. And I think it did, detangling was very easy, so much so I think I used too much Cyclo even then. I had used 3 drops, next time 2 will do for my whole head, as the next morning I had to add more moisture.

I like this. Where I had been on an all natural products kick for years, I did miss that slick feel. But also and weirdly, I used my ElastaQP shampoo for relaxed hair and moisturising conditioner, they used to be my staple before Green People; I realised I had some conditioner left so thought I'd just use those and my hair was not happy at all. It felt really coated and sickly for want of a better word. Clearly either my hair or my fingers got used to the Green People set pretty damn quickly.

Anyway, I'm glad I got the Clyclomethicone game right, if my hair is growing at the speed I think / hope it is now that I'm taking care of it, I'm going to need it. I'm also going to need to become friends with adding a little extra Jojoba oil when styling in the morning, the hair isn't dry but I do know I should be adding extra oil on places that pulled in any way like with a hair band.


Little by little

Protective styles - making it work for me

A minute on protective styles.
I was supposed to write about Hair oil next but I'm not really feeling it. - The topic not the oil, the oil is fabulous.

I am now learning to embrace protective styles. And I have to get a bit deep and explain why it took me so long.

I relax my hair because I like variety, there are numerous hairstyles that suit my rather strong featured face that I can do with relaxed hair. I can and did canerow my own hair for several years but I found it tiresome and really uninspiring. Also my hair wasn't very long then so that also didn't give me much room for manoeuvre unless I added hair extensions.

I understood the need for protective styles after reading The Science of Black hereafter known as(TSoB). I introduced some styles where I could but I mostly struggled because I didn't feel like I looked pretty if I didn't wear my hair down be it straight or with the use of god given flexi-rods. There I've said it out loud. I felt like I looked like a child with big canerows going to church. It didn't feel effeminate to me whatsoever. Because I'm not a big makeup wearer I felt my whole face just looked plain and invisible if I didn't have my hair to add some razamataz to it.

But now several years on and oh so many expletives towards low self esteem later, that's how I've mostly been wearing my hair since the beginning of this year. I stretch for 9 weeks and during the winter when the weather is frightful, there's not really much point in attempting to wear your hear out. But as I have restarted my journey I thought it best to really look at what I was doing again, and see if I should be doing something differently or regiment it a bit more.

Towards the end of my stretch I became very good friends with the 2 large canerows. Alternated parting on the right and left every week just in case I was pulling to hard at the temple hair. I did feel like I pulled on the hair way too much but with a lot of new growth and that weird end texture your previously relaxed hair gets when it knows it's time to re do it; I just needed to make sure everything was in place. All in all I think I'll give myself an A for effort but not for out come, the style looked good but I needed to prepare my hair MUCH more before I handled it so much. And I canerowed it fresh every morning and lightly at night.

But now with my fairly fresh hair, it's all about the flat twists. I started off doing the single twists because the texture it gives me hair really works for me and makes a simple grip at the back style effortless whilst still looking like I put effort in. But as I am useless at pinning curls on a second or third day, I had to redo all of those single twists every night, which is rather more handling than I should probably do on my fine hair. I'm not sure if flat twists are actually less handling or not but their certainly quicker. Another bonus is that with the twists, I have the choice to do them tight or puffy, very weirdly for me I'm rather enjoying the puffy, they're about an inch up off my head (that's a lot for me) and that extra length / depth / direction works with my strong jaw line. Although I did realise I needed a new set of go to everyday earrings to work with my wearing my hair up nearly all the time. I have ordered them today and I'm a little in love.

I think after all this it's about finding what works for you. I felt so pressured to do what every one else was doing that I never really gave myself a chance to enjoy my hair and my hair type for that matter with my hair length on my head crowning my lovely face.

I'm going to start enjoying my hair again, and I do expect great things from it. Just changing my product line up like I did years ago had nearly an immediate effect. Now I'm not saying I expect to have waist length hair by Christmas; but I will be expecting length that's healthy because I darn well worked for it.😍

The first wash after relaxer

And... I still have hair. So I used JASON aloe vera conditioner to do my mid week co wash. Where I'm still not used to not having the bone straight feeling, my hair felt a little weird before the water hit it, slightly wavy and a tiny bit frizzy at the back. But the water just sorted everything right out. I added 1 drop of Rosemary essential oil to the conditioner as usually about 10 days after a relaxer I have a terribly dry flaky scalp that I need to condition several times to get rid of the dead skin. I didn't actually have a dry scalp but I thought it doesn't hurt to pump up the conditioner a bit.

Towel dried the hair, no need for the diy leave in spray as it's already moisturised. Put my hair oil in finger combed and did 2 long twist rows. The hair feels fuller I can't tell if the rosemary was necessary or not but I feel better for adding it rather than leaving it out.

This is how good I was feeling.

It's pretty weird weather in London at the moment, with all the various storms and annoyingly windy weather. I did catch up with my natural headed friends yesterday though and thought well if they can do it - and look good while doing it, I need to man up a tad.

As I write this it's Sunday and I'm sitting with the conditioner in for a while. I had to do a pre poo with a olive and sunflower oil as I was out late last night and neglected to sort out my hair before bed. I know better why don't I do better? Currently using Green People Moisturising shampoo and conditioner. I think it will be a week of hats to work again and twisting it up in a grip at the back. As protective styles go it's easy and still looks good so I'll keep going with that.

Going to start reading the Science of Black Hair by Audrey Davis-Sivasothy again. A fantastic book that taught me pretty much everything I know and started me on my natural products journey many years ago.

Now off to do a cool rinse and finger comb (yawn).

Next post will be about my much loved DIY hair oil.