While I was home in LA for the weekend, I observed that my mom had awesome skin! I mean, she has her periods. There was one time when her skin looked pliant, radiant and taut and she told me she was using lemon juice diluted with water to rinse her face with every morning. I wanted to try it, but couldn't keep up the regiment. And this time, she told me she had been using Artistry, a beauty brand from Amway (for some reason though, I have an association of Amway with scam. I don't know quite where that came from.)
That and Clinique's bonus days this past weekend got me thinking about toners. With a simple question to google, "Is Clinique's clarifying lotion a toner?" I came upon several cool sites with my mind teeming with ideas for an ideal toner for myself.
First and foremost, Skin Deep, a cosmetic database that evaluates products based on the safety of their ingredients. It compiles a compendium of published research on different ingredients. I've been able to find a fair number of common products that I use on a daily basis. While I take its reviews with a tablespoon of salt (since many scientific studies feed rats a great amount of a particular chemical to amplify the biological effects), I find it useful when used as a relative safety guide.
After being scared by Skin Deep blaring about the dangers of the various chemicals we are committing suicides with, I searched for a decent all natural toner, but I couldn't find one easily available on the market. In my search, I then stumbled upon care2 make a difference. I find some of the articles fairly useful and on the dot, such as using apple cider vinegar as a cleaning agent or a hair rinse, or using baking soda as a clarifying agent to get rid of residues from hair products. Anyway, by logical extension, since they are not crazy green people, their advice might be worth trying. I am particularly interested in making a sugar scrub (pictured, and I already have one as a gift which works totally well, but that's the allure/fun/pitfall of makeup and skin care, it's the novelty of it all), it seems super easy to make, add vinegar to Butters' water as a flea deterrent (from the apple cider vinegar article), apple cider vinegar toner, and a green tea toner.
That got me thinking about my own toner. Initially, someone recommended using just aloe vera juice. In wondering what other properties/goodness I can add to it, I thought about the more traditional witch hazel. So far, a witch hazel hydrosol (one without the standard 14% alcohol, using water instead) has been rather elusive. However, it might not even be necessary because according to this, for my skin, it's better to use a floral water as a base rather than witch hazel. I totally feel like a chemist, trying to navigate the creation of the toner btw. What is the purpose of glycerin in some of these recipes? What is the shelf life of this concoction? Will the different properties even counteract each other? Only time will tell...
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