The Green Beauty Guide: Your Essential Resource to Organic and Natural Skin Care, Hair Care, Makeup, and Fragrances (32 page)

Weleda Iris Day Cream
is a basic day moisturizer that you can also use at night. Formulated with organic jojoba oil, beeswax, and bio-dynamic
Iris germanica
root extract, this flower-smelling lotion provides a great base for many active ingredients such as L-carnosine, green tea extract, hyaluronic acid, and most synthetic peptides for collagen synthesis.

If you need a lightweight moisturizer to go under a heavy sunscreen, consider
Pangea Organics French Chamomile & Orange Blossom Facial Cream.
Originally formulated for oily skin, this featherlight serumis basically lavender tincture with organic plant oils, vegetable glycerin, and sugar emulsifiers, enriched with extracts of burdock, elderflower, witch hazel, and chamomile. Packed in a convenient pump bottle, it comes in a box stuffed with seeds that you can plant in your organic garden. This lotion blends well with such active ingredients as yeast beta glucans, copper peptide, Indian pennywort (
Centella asiatica
), and ellagic acid.

CARE by Stella McCartney 5 Benefits Moisturising Fluid
is a heavenly scented, lightly hydrating, firming, and healing fluid lotion. I use it during the summer, and it provides an excellent base for mineral foundations. Based on garden cornflower water, plant-derived fatty alcohols, sunflower seed, and soybean oils, this rich yet lightweight moisturizer delivers the goodness of sixteen (!) antioxidant and calming essential oils, as well as sodium hyaluronate. Packed in an airtight bottle, it requires no preservatives. This also means you won’t be able to add any additional actives to the mix, but this cosmetic product is very good by itself.

Moisturizers by Dr. Hauschka
are in a class of their own. They don’t travel into the eyes (so you can use them around the eye area), they are just the right texture (feeling great under makeup), and they don’t contain essential oils for added scent. I love using
Quince Day Cream
(the fashion industry favorite) in the summer, under mineral makeup for sun protection,
Rose Day Cream
in the winter and on my baby’s bum,
Tinted Day Cream
all year around, when I feel like wearing just a hint ofmakeup, and
Moisturizing Lotion
anytime my skin misbehaves. These moisturizers come in handy (albeit smallish) tubes, so if you want to blend them with active ingredients, you’ll need to transfer creams to a glass jar. Not sure if it’s worth it: most Dr. Hauschka creams do not mix well with my favorite skin actives. Only
Rose Day Cream
works well with a scoop of
Philosophy Hope and a Prayer
topical vitamin C.

JASON Natural Cosmetics Pure 5,000 IU Vitamin E Oil
is a versatile moisturizer that will get you through many skin challenges. Surprisingly lightweight and fast penetrating, it is actually a blend of seven organic oils (sunflower, safflower, rice bran, apricot, peach kernel, avocado, and wheat germ oils)—even though the label states it’s just five oils! It also contains emollient lecithin and a whopping 5,000 IU of vitamin E. This oil blends extremely well with such potent active ingredients as alpha lipoic acid (be gentle on this one!), lutein, lycopene, various carotenoids, and phytosterols.

Green Beauty Oils

Most people shun oils as a beauty aid. Those with acne-prone skin want oil-free products because “oil clogs pores,” and people with normal skin avoid oils for fear of tipping the scale of their skin balance toward the oily, acneic type. In fact, most pore-clogging ingredients aren’t natural oils. They are mineral oil and animal fats. We now know that many high-quality moisturizers contain plain and essential oils because oils are wonderful at binding moisture to the skin and strengthening skin cell membranes.

Facial oil is the only moisturizer worth trying to cook at home. It will also serve you better than many commercially made creams and lotions. Beauty oil ingredients come cheap; you can twist and turn the formula to suit your skin’s needs; you can make one oily serum for your blemishes and one for wrinkles; one for windy winter days when your cheeks turn beetroot pink and one to use after lazy summer afternoons on the beach. Just dab a few drops of oil of your choice and top it with your regular moisturizer, a heavy sunscreen that often leaves you no room for extra moisturizer, or leave the oil to work on your skin alone.

Making Your Own Beauty Oils

Here are some topical oil-based treatments you may find useful. Preparing beauty oil is extremely easy. All you need is a glass pump bottle and a dropper. The formula usually consists of carrier oil and a few drops of essential oils. Pour the carrier oil into a bottle, add essential oils, drop by drop, shake well, and leave to synergize for one day. To use, apply a drop of oil to each fingertip. Rub fingers lightly against each other to warm the oils. Inhale the oils deeply. Press the fingertips gently against your skin and lightly spread in upward, gentle circular motions. Do not apply oils too close to the eye area.

Glow-Reviving
Oil

1/2 ounce avocado oil

1 drop neroli essential oil

1 drop clove essential oil

1 drop jasmine essential oil

½ teaspoon of nude golden mineral shimmer (try Aromaleigh Pure Hue Intense Multi-Purpose Powders in adobe or brocade)

Yield:
4 ounces

This luxurious, fast-penetrating oil is versatile enough to use on the face, hands, and décolleté. Shake the bottle before use.

1. Combine all the oils in a bottle and shake vigorously.

2. Add the mineral glimmer. Shake again to distribute the pigment. Shake before each use.

Soothing
Face Oil

1 tablespoon organic rose hip oil

1 tablespoon organic virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon organic aloe vera juice

2 drops calendula essential oil

1 drop chamomile oil

1 drop comfrey essential oil

Yield
:
5 ounces

This antioxidant oil blend comforts irritated, red, or hot skin, especially in wintertime or after prolonged sun exposure.

Combine the oils in a pretty glass or china bottle and shake vigorously.

Sun Protection
Beauty Oil

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon carrot seed oil

1 tablespoon kukui seed oil

400 IU vitamin E

2 drops beta-carotene

2 drops vitamin D

Yield:
4 ounces

This facial oil contains natural sun guards that will not replace a sunscreen but will boost its effectiveness and shield your skin from mild sunrays in wintertime. Many plants contain natural sun protection mechanisms, which are the best way to support the skin’s own production of melanin.

Combine the oils in a pretty glass or china bottle and shake vigorously.

Green Eye Care

There’s an old saying that the eyes are the mirrors of your soul. From a nutritionist’s point of view, your eyes and the skin around them also mirror the health of your circulatory and digestive systems. Not only do our eyes reveal our natural radiance and allure, but also lack of sleep, water, and fiber in our diet, too much junk food, and too much sun exposure.

Just like our facial skin combines too many “skin types,” the skin around the eyes has different areas that should be treated accordingly. The skin in the eye socket has very small pores,
and it’s the thinnest on our face. Blood vessels are only a fraction of an inch away from the surface of the skin, and constant movements of the eye require this skin to be pliable yet taut. The skin on the outer sides of the eyes, near your temples, is more similar to the facial skin on your cheeks and forehead, but it’s prone to easy wrinkling because of the way we smile—and I hope you smile a lot!

Any eye treatment product should not be applied to the eye socket area. No matter what you choose to make your eyes look brighter and younger, keep the product at least one-quarter inch away from the lash line. You may apply a firming cream to your brow bone area, but make sure to keep it away from the eyelids.

There are a lot of skin care products aimed at the eye area: creams, lotions, serums, gels, patches, and masks. In your twenties, you don’t need a special moisturizer for your eye area. If you use a natural, lightweight moisturizer and regularly shield your eyes with durable UV-coated sunglasses, then you can use your regular moisturizer under the eyes, making sure not to rub it into the eye sockets.

When I hear a recommendation that I should use a product that is specifically formulated for the eye area, I usually ask, “What’s so different about it?” I usually hear that “these products are designed to be light enough for the eye area, yet still deliver a lot of moisture.”A close examination of the ingredients list doesn’t reveal any dramatic difference. For example, Kinerase Intensive Eye Cream contains the following ingredients: water, a blend of synthetic fatty acids and fatty alcohols that work as emollients (glyceryl stearate, laureth-23, isopropyl palmitate, stearic acid, cetyl alcohol, stearyl alcohol), penetration enhancers (propylene glycol, imidazolidinyl urea), slip agent dimethicone, preservatives (methylparaben, propylparaben), triethanolamine, and a few plant ingredients such as safflower seed oil, soya sterol, and aloe leaf juice. The cream also contains the powerful natural antioxidant N6-Furfuryladenine (kinetin) and a totally useless collagen and elastin that were proven ineffective as antiaging components many years ago.