Try this homemade mint skin toner!
Cleanse and tone your skin with this DIY natural mint skin toner. In a few steps, you’ll have a great toner that is free of synthetic chemicals and much less expensive then store-bought brands. Apple cider vinegar is packed with alpha-hydroxy and amino acids that help to dissolve dead skin cells, balance the pH level of skin and stimulate blood circulation. The acetic acid in apple cider vinegar stimulates the capillaries under the skin, leaving you with a soft glow. Made with simple ingredients everyone is likely to have on hand — a pinch of mint from the pots on your front porch (or your Lady Moon Farms produce box, or the grocery store!), some apple cider vinegar, and distilled water. This is homemade skin toner that you could eat. Your skin absorbs 70% of what you slather on it; so why would you want to put weird chemicals and other junk on it just to make it feel nice? I started doing for my skin care products what I’d done with my food — looking at ingredients labels. Skin toner, lotion, gentle cleansers. It didn’t matter. They were all costly and had labels that read like chemistry textbooks. So, I stopped using them. I started using skin care products that I could happily eat (no, I don’t eat them).
Apple cider vinegar alone makes a useful astringent that can help clear up oily or blemished skin, but many find the scent to be too off-putting or the straight vinegar to be too acidic. That’s where this recipe for homemade mint skin toner comes to the rescue. The mint infusion makes the skin toner pleasant, and the added water dilutes the acidity to the perfect levels for daily use. Among the benefits: it helps even out skin tone and smoothes out your skin’s texture, helps minimizes the size and appearance of pores, dries up and reduces redness from breakouts almost over night, and helps regulate oil production and impart’s a radiant glow. Sounds like a winner to me!!
I’m already a huge fan of vinegar in general-I add plain white vinegar to my washing machine because it eliminates ground-in odors and helps prevent colors from fading (and no, your clothes don’t come out of washing machine smelling like salad dressing-you can’t even smell it) as well as to my dishwasher in lieu of “Jet Dry” because it prevents streaks and spots on dishes.Yay vinegar! Ok, here it is:
Homemade Mint Skin Toner Recipe
3 Tablespoons fresh mint
2 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
1 Cup distilled water
1. Chop fresh mint and put it in a glass jar
2. Add vinegar and water to jar and put the lid on
3. Let sit for 3 days at room temerature to steep
4. Strain into clean container and apply with a cotton ball (or you can use a spray bottle and spray directly on your face) after cleansing
Using this toner is just one way to reduce your chemical exposure, but keep up the good work and keep reading those labels!
*UPDATE 01/20/2012 : OK, I’ve been using this homemade mint skin toner on my face for a week now, and let me tell you, I love what it is doing for my skin tone. I’m less dry, less noticeable splotchiness…It does still have a funky scent-it is vinegar after all-but the smell goes away as soon as it dries! Try it, you’ll like it!