Swathy and Sky

You are here: Home / Archives for DIY

DIY

Top 5 DIY Ingredients for Brides {Bridal Files}

· · 25 Comments

So, as I said that I would be doing some posts on bridal series, the first and foremost request is always how to brighten the complexion.I am listing down 5 of the ingredients which can help a bride achieve the most wanted glow.
  • Tomato: Rub a slice of tomato on your face and neck. Let the juice dry on the skin and wash off with cold water. Tomato is great for removing the skin tan and also suits all skin types a sit is comparatively less acidic than lemon. And, it also makes hair shiny.
  • Honey: A thick honey mask helps to keep the skin supple and moisturized always. It can be used every day too and helps with all skin types. Honey is also a great cleanser.
  • Almond Oil: As Punam commented on earlier post, dark circles and puffy eyes are a common occurrence when one spends their nights talking to the fiancées, almond oil comes to rescue. Apply almond oil on the eye area while going to bed. It helps with the dark circles and also with wrinkles which might be developing there.
  • Sugar: Sugar is the most amazing and cheapest scrub you can ever find and this is my most favorite DIY till date. Sugar has glycolic acid in some measure (depending on how much it has been been processed) and thus cleanses and exfoliates the skin thoroughly and makes it glow. And, you can add your favorite ingredients to it.
  • Spices: A mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves did wonders to my skin. It clears the skin and also helps deal with acne and pimples in the long run. It should be used on alternate days for best results.
These are some of my favorite DIY’s with outstanding results so hope you will enjoy them 🙂 And, do remember to treat your neck as part of your face otherwise it can betray your age!!

Sugar Body Scrub with a twist {DIY}

· · 5 Comments

Ok, let me confess that making a DIY every week is really not easy for So, today’s recipe is almost a copy of the sugar body polish which I have posted long back. I could think of nothing else and I have so many products to finish that it simply discourages me from whipping anything up. So, I have decided that next week I shall bring you a different series of DIY’s which will include Essential Oils because currently, I am a lot into them.
Ingredients
  • 3 table spoon sugar
  • 1 table spoon fuller’s Earth or multani mitti
  • 1 table spoon rose petals powder
  • 1 tablespoon spices (mixture of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves)
  • Honey (as required)
  • Essential Oils (optional)

Method

Mix all the ingredients except EO and honey. Add honey and make a gooey paste. Add 1-2 drops of your favorite drops of EO’s and, scrub and rub a dub 🙂
Results
Awesomely soft and instantly glowing skin. Moisturize well and sleep off to protect this glow and it will last you for days together. Do this once a week for a good scrubbing.
The rose petals provide luxury and spices provide a spicy edge to the scrub. And, you will like the smell too.
Hope you like it 🙂 

Mistakes and Improvements in Perfume Making (Part IV) {DIY}

· · 4 Comments

So, last three weeks, I had discussed and elaborated on my efforts on perfume making at home. Today, I wanted to talk about some of my mistakes and shortcomings in the whole process and what I have learned from them.
Profiles of Essential Oils

This is a very important point. Whenever you are going to buy EO’s or in fact, going to blend them, always make sure that all the EO’s you are going to use do blend with each other harmoniously. For example, when I decided to buy the first 5 EO’s, I had checked out their profiles very carefully from MountainRoseHerbs.com [go to the Essential Oils and click on Learn More for further information].
I got for myself – Bergamot, Rosemary, Neroli, Ylang Ylang and Frankincense. And, then, I decided to do a blend of all the 5 EO’s together. After I had made the blend, I sensed that something was wrong because nothing was blending well and then, I checked out the profiles once more and found out that Rosemary doesn’t go with any of the others so the blend was fruitless.
So, when you are going to try any new blend, you should definitely keep this in mind.
Ways to try out new blends
EO’s don’t really come cheap so there are a few tips which might help you.
  • If you think about a promising blend, take those EO’s and open their caps and inhale their scents together and see if you find the aroma promising. This is a little of hit and miss so I tried out the next tip.
  • Use cotton ear buds. Fit them in the EO’s nozzle and take out a drop of the EO. Put it in a small glass tub. Do the same with all the EO’s you want in your blend. Use separate buds for each EO. You can also cut the buds in the middle. Keep all the buds in the glass jar and keep it ina  dark place for 48 hours. Take it out and sniff the aroma. If you like it, you can proceed with the blending.
Either of these methods save the wastage.
Disadvantages of Homemade Perfume Making
Ok, what I found out was that the longer you keep the blend, the stronger the perfume becomes. But, application of perfume oil is really difficult. You either need a dabber or a roll-on otherwise the oil doesn’t get applied smoothly. So, always think about packaging before hand. Same problem went with the solid perfume too. The applicators are easy to apply otherwise you have to use the fingers to apply.
Another issue which I faced was how long the perfume stays on me. And, this is quite a concern. And, I really need to work on making my perfume oils stay long enough. As of now, I am not really happy with it because a lot of factors affect this. But, still I do want to keep the perfume oil on my skin for entire day or at least half a day and I am not yet sure how far have I come in this endeavor.
So, this finishes my DIY series on perfume making. I shall keep updating whenever I find something significant to report. And, hope you liked the series and it has intrigued you enough to try out this interesting DIY for yourself 🙂Previous Posts in the series:
How to make Perfume Oil at home? (Part I)
How to make Perfume Oil at home? (Part II)
How to make Solid Perfume at home? (Part III)