Thursday, August 9, 2012

Adventures In Beauty - DIY Blackhead Mask

...or, "The Great White Stink"


I am a girl who has never been knowledgeable in many beauty products or beauty routines. Nor have I been very adventurous. My hair is curly and thank God because if it were straight it would most likely just hang there like a limp noodle. I've never spent two hours on my hair in the morning, which is why I don't straighten it. I'd have to wake up super early, straighten it...and then use more products to poof it back up again. That's too much damn work for this single mother at 5 in the morning.

That in mind, I am on the hunt for no muss no fuss beauty rituals you can do at home, quickly and on the cheap. I have yet to find a solution to my hair always looking the same, but I have stumbled across some really interesting facials, foot scrubs, nail polish colors, beauty organization tips and other things along those lines. Previously establishing that I have no talent in the beauty department, I am here to test these tips I find from "expert" girls to see how easy they are to apply to real life and how well they get the job done.

Today's task was a made at home blackhead removal mask. The ingredients/instructions were:

1tsp Milk
1 tsp Unflavored Gelatin Mix
Put a hot cloth over your face to open your pores. Dry off face completely before applying mask.
Heat milks and gelatin on the stove until thick
Apply with a cotton swab (I used a facial sponge) while mixture is warm, not hot.
Allow to dry completely. If it feels gel-like, it is not dry yet.
Peel off the mask and your blackheads.

Here's how it went...

I started with my full face of makeup

Used Facial Cleansing Towelettes to remove everything

Clean face


I decided to also exfoliate with Simple Exfoliating Facial Wipes. Just to make sure my face was good and ready for this mask.


Then I gathered my ingredients. Milk and unflavored gelatine.


The instructions say to use a hot towel on your face to open your pores. I have never found a good method for this so tonight I tried just microwaving a dry towel. Seemed to work. 


I mixed my ingredients (1tsp milk and 1 tsp of the gelatine)


I quickly applied the hot towel to my face


I decided to use a facial sponge to apply the mask, because a q-tip seemed like it would turn into a cottony disaster. Well it turns out that it is very hard to keep the mask warm enough to stay in a liquid state and not hot enough to burn your skin off while you apply it. This dried way too quickly and I wasn't able to get any on my face. It also didn't seem like enough. So I repeated the warming process, but this time I doubled the recipe, making twice as much. Somehow I got it to stay liquid while I ran to the bathroom mirror with the pot and the facial sponge. Now, this stuff STINKS to high heaven. It just stinks. Bad. It's gross. And I'm not gonna lie, the first touch of it going onto my face burned me. It was still too damn hot. But I needed to cover my face with this crap and I knew it was going to gel up any second. By the third touch of it to myface, it had cooled considerably and was still liquid enough to be spread everywhere. How you are supposed to get the timing right on this is beyond me.

So here I am all masked up and waiting to dry.


A few minutes later my whole face mask was dry to the touch and ready to be peeled off. If you look at the picture below, you will see right in the middle, this mas actually extracted some (for lack of a better word) pimple juice right out of my face. Something that wasn't even on the surface of my skin yet.

At times, it was difficult and a tad painful to remove. 


The worse parts were where the mask had already started to gel while I was still applying and did not go on thick and evenly across my face. That was a lot of picking to get off as much as I could. To loosen it up, I would open my mouth wide and it would start to bust apart.
Looks like something Stan Winston created
Warning: This mask stops at nothing!! Here you can see that it removed, root and all, a good portion of my eyebrows! Well...at least it saved me a trip to the salon.


When it was all said and done, my skin felt absolutely amazing!!! Soooo smooth and baby soft. It was fabulous. But as I was looking at the mask peelings, I did not see one blackhead attached to it. So, the mask did not serve it's intended purpose. It removed zero blackheads, but it did manage to bring some more to the surface. *eye roll* I'm not quite sure what it actually did, but my face felt GREAT!!!


It left a big ole' mess though.


Post mask. Would I use this mask again? Hell no. It is not worth the effort. This is one at home project that I would actually recommend just going to the drug store and buying an over the counter blackhead removal mask or some pore strips. I remember using them in junior high and I always really liked them. 

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go scrape all this hardened gel shit off my kitchen pot.


24 comments:

  1. My friend and I just tried it, but we microwaved the mixture for 10 seconds in a glass jar. It wasn't too hot and clean up was easy. Peeling off was...interesting. We learned where not to put it, and I decided I should have done the hot cloth first (thought my pores were open, but they weren't). Going to try again another day but just target the nose.

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    1. That's a good idea to microwave it. Thank you for that tip. =D

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  2. I bought the Citrus Clear Grapefruit Spot Treatment to reduce the oil on my combination skin and to get rid of some of my blackheads. Yes! You can use the Citrus Clear spot treatment as a mask as well! My dermatologist told me this, and I am so happy about it!

    I rinse with lots of warm water to open my pores and then use the Citrus Clear Grapefruit Spot Treatment. About half of my blackheads go away each time I use it! It's a fantastic product and I'm addicted.

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    Replies
    1. I'll have to look for that. That sounds fantastic! Thank you.

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  3. I just found this post from a Google search for this recipe - thanks for the honest and hilarious review! I ended up trying it with strong chamomile tea, gelatin, and a bit of honey and used one of those wibbly looking spatulas from home waxing kits to put it on. It's got a bit of wet dog "pong" but I imagine warm milk would be a lot worse... :/ just waiting to peel it off now. (Thanks for the warning re: eyebrows.)

    My guess is that hot towels means a hot wet face cloth. Dry towels in the microwave = fire hazard, don't ask how I found that out! Haha... it is good for disinfecting kitchen sponges though, just put them in a bowl of water and zap it for a couple of minutes :) Good luck with life, the universe and everything! - KD

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    1. What a cute comment. I love it. Thanks. :) And yes, a hot wet towel. But starting a kitchen fire using a microwave sounds just like the sort of thing I would accidentally do. I'm glad you liked my posting. I'm just a girl who doesn't know how to do anything, but I try to show the world how to do it anyway. Ha!

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  4. I've done this several times. I don't do the hot wet towel thing, I do a scrub with baking soda first, rinse with warm water, dry well. 1 tbs h20, 1 tbs gelatine, microwave 10 seconds in a teacup. by the time I get to the bathroom, it's cool enough. I just glop it on with my fingers, thicker in problem spots like nose and try not to smell it. it takes 10-15 min to cool/harden completely. I get a ton of tiny hairs, blackheads and dead skin off with this. My mom loves it b/c it's way cheaper than getting her face threaded for all the tiny hairs that annoy the piss out of her.

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  5. I'm sitting here with the mixture on my face. I look like an elephant got a little too "excited" on my face and unfortunately I didn't read the comments until after I slathered it all over my entire family's face including parts of their eyebrows....oops!

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  6. I'm sitting here with the mixture on my face. I look like an elephant got a little too "excited" on my face and unfortunately I didn't read the comments until after I slathered it all over my entire family's face including parts of their eyebrows....oops!

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  7. It's funny because you're smearing the start of homemade fondant on your face XD

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  8. I have to agree it stinks big time. I have it on my face now wairing for it to dry. I did not do the hot towel trick first I just wiped my face with alcohol. Wish me luck

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  9. Ouch, that hurt......
    Don't think it did much for the blackheads so I decided to try it again.

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  10. it should come as no wonder that these happen to be the preferred at home blackhead remover for most people. blackhead removal

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  11. Ohh... Nice to see with advantages with blackhead Mask..
    Best Peel Off Mask

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  12. Awesom! I also tried these home remedies for blackheads and I have now got great results.

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  13. Ouch, that hurt......
    Don't think it did much for the blackheads so I decided to try it again.
    blackhead removal

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  14. .Wow! Thanks for sharing! I’ve been searching for others routine where I can get ideas and this one is the best.
    Well done!
    Now you can easily remove blackheads using blackhead remover mask !

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  15. I love your posts about the products you are using .
    I was wondering what are your thoughts about Rodan and Fields
    skincare products.
    blackhead remover mask is for healthy and glowing skin!
    Thank you

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  16. Thanks for the informative post, we can also use Skin Scrubber Electronic facial machine to get rid of blackheads and can have clean and fairer skin.

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  17. For blackhead remover i tried charcoal mask but it is not that much effective.. I tried with blackhead vacuum
    dead skin

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  18. I Found your article very interesting I learned lot from your content So kind of you to provide us a knowledge of these important things really heplful, Check out our face mask brand Urban Secrets

    ReplyDelete