Happy New Year to you and your families !
I wish you all the best for 2016 - May it be a year of surprises, creativity and happiness.
Take care of yourselves and your loved ones, physically and mentally.
Take the time to sit back and enjoy what you have.
Personally, it is the first time ever that I actually take resolutions (you can find Madeline's here) and really want to stick to them.
One is to spend more time with my creative self and try to write loads of really cool and nice articles for the blog.
We discussed with Madeline over Christmas what we wanted ParisDublin to become and we both have the desire to make it grow bigger and better :) Good news for ye if you like us enough to bare more of us !
On January 1st, I spent a good hour in my kitchen, but not baking!
I made few small soaps and a gorgeous (yes, I am praising it already) coffee and brown sugar scrub.
I tried the scrub few hours later, before my shower - the smell is heavenly, it is gentle on the skin and yet you can feel the power of the scrub and it leaves your skin smooth.
I would recommend to use it twice to three per week.
Also, please test on a small part of your skin first, to avoid big allergy reactions.
Coffee and Brown Sugar Scrub
You will need:
- 1 cup of ground coffee
- Half a cup (1/2) of brown sugar (I mixed light brown sugar with some demerera sugar to get a more granulated feel to the scrub)
- A quarter of a cup (1/4) of almond oil
- 1 teaspoon of Vitamin E (optional) **: I used Bio-Oil
- Few drops of any essential oil you like : I used Orange for its smell and properties
Mix the dry ingredient well together
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Add the almond oil, the Bio-oil and the desired essence
Pour in an airtight jar that you can decorate - especially if you make the scrub as a give away present.
To use: Wet skin and rub the mix over legs, arms, tummy etc.
When you are finished massaging, rinse out in the shower. For better finish, I would suggest that you hydrate your skin with some moisturizer or dry oil after your shower.
The scrub keeps for about 3 weeks - but you should finish it before then ;).
Gentle Exfoliating Soaps
- Two soaps : any kind
- Wheat bran (roughly 1/4 cup)
- Essence oils (optional - only if desired) : I used Ylang-Ylang for its soothing properties
- A grater
- Molds (cupcakes, ice cubes, soaps etc.)
If you don't use essence of any kind, I would suggest that you pay a bit more attention to your soap then - the smell is a major factor ("Major Factor!" *salute*).
Grate the soaps into a saucepan and melt over low heat - stay right beside and stir regularly in order to avoid any disasters - soap can burn !
Once it is melted, it will form a thick paste. Remove from the heat, add the bran and essence. Stir well and press down into the molds. You can put coffee beans, dried flowers or anything else at the bottom of your molds to decorate the soaps.
You will want to proceed with all those steps fast enough to avoid the soap to set.
Once they are dry, take the soaps off the molds and wrap them. I went with a nice sheet of thin paper and some see-thru plastic wrapping.
Feel free to change the recipes around, change the essential oils according to your liking and their properties.
Be always careful of buying oils that can be used for skin care - do not use candle fragrance !
Let us know if you make your own products.
Ben xx
** I used Bio-Oil, but in future I would prefer Vitamin E oil, or nothing. The vegetable oil that is the almond oil has enough good properties to not have to add vitamins. Adding the vitamin E oil is a plus regarding scars, stretch marks healing.
Bio-Oil is a chemical based oil : it's not natural, it's not "bio" - its composition is no better or worse than any shop bought cream.
It only depends what you want for your skin regime.
I know myself that I will not be using Bio-Oil too often and not in this DIY anymore. When needing a more powerful scrub, I'll get some Vitamin E oil in some health shop.
B.
