Essential Oils Help Dry Summer Skin and Create Your Natural Toner

By
Carrie
Published: July 6, 2009Posted in: Skincare

Today, I wanted to share a secret beauty on how to cus­tomize prod­ucts we already own from Becky Watkin, skin­care expert from Dior. In this econ­omy, extend­ing the life of your exist­ing beauty prod­ucts is a tip any­one can benefit.

Becky said many women have dry skin, even in the sum­mer and com­plain about their prod­ucts not work­ing.  The extra sun, sun­screen, sand and out­door ele­ments also make my skin a bit parched.   Becky’s beauty secret is to add a few drops of a your favorite essential oil to your mois­tur­izer.  Mix in the essen­tial oil into your mois­tur­izer and it will help you relax with aro­mather­apy as well as add some extra mois­ture into your cream.  The essen­tial oil “wakes up” your mois­tur­izer to help with dryness.

She sug­gests using a high qual­ity essen­tial oil as there are many dif­fer­ent types and qual­ity vari­a­tions of essen­tial oils.  Essential oils are reg­u­lated on a case by case basis by the FDA.  The quality of the plant, how it is processed, whether it has been diluted and how it is stored all affect qual­ity.  As a con­sumer, it is dif­fi­cult to access qual­ity solely by smell or visu­ally.    Buying essential oils from a rep­utable source is impor­tant and check­ing the label for con­cen­tra­tion, source of plant, type of plant and any other infor­ma­tion will help to access the qual­ity.  Whole Foods sells essen­tial oils and I bought mine from a local nat­ural food store called Rainbow Grocery.

I also add essen­tial oils such as laven­der and pep­per­mint into bot­tled water to make a claudienat­ural toner to repli­cate my favorite toner: Caudalie Beauty Elixir.  It has active ingre­di­ents of grape­seed extract, mint and rose­mary in a base of orange blos­som water.    The cost is $15 for a 1 oz bottle.

Sources and More Information on Essential Oils:

Buckle, J. (2003). Clinical aro­mather­apy: Essential oils in prac­tice, 2nd Ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.

Price, S., Price, L., (1999). Aromatherapy for health pro­fes­sion­als. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.

Tisserand, R. & Balacs, T. (1995). Essential oil safety: A guide for health pro­fes­sion­als. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.