Orange Peel Powder

Okay, so I mentioned in my About Me section that I was in the process of drying out orange peel to grind up...
Today is the day (':

Although it's April now, because I live in Ireland it took a wee bit longer for the sun to dry the orange peel completely and I ended up transporting the plate of peel to various locations in my house to chase the sun, such as the bathroom windowsill, my bed, the corner of my room, the patio flooor...
But now it's finally ready to get grinding ehehe
So, the orange peel should look something like this (I think?):

This is the peel of two oranges, with as little of the white pith as possible, because the surface has the most vitamin C, which is what we're looking for, so the white isn't important for this (:
And they had been cut into small strips to make the drying process quicker and easier ^^
So, the next step is...the food processor!
I don't think my family actually has a food processor, but it's a wee machine with spinning blades so I'm gonna just go with it~

After blending it for a bit it started looking like this:

But obviously this isn't powdery enough so I kept on blending on like a trojan!
Unfortunately for this mixer thingy we have to hold it down and keep pressing the 'turbo' button for it to actually work its magic... and after what seemed like an eternity of holding (and even shaking) it, this was all the progress I made:

As you can see, it's still got little lumps in it and all around the edge of the container is a fine powder

If only it all looked like this.. grr ><
And seeing as I have A-Levels soon I thought I would just leave the rest of the blending until my next study break...and then promptly got distracted by watching My Queen (敗犬女王) so I suppose I should actually work now and come back to this later!


Right so I kept on going for a while later on, and got it into a fine enough powder (:

So now it looks like this, and I'm just going to have to put it in some kind of container.

I had read that a good mask to use this orange peel powder stuff with would be one made with orange peel powder, multani mitti and some milk, as it is good for lightening skin (not always for paleness, because I'm pale enough, but for reducing redness, which I have too much of, reducing acnes scars or uneven skin tone) and drawing out impurties.
Unfortunately, my multani mitti (or Fuller's Earth) is still in the post so I can't try this mask out as soon as I wanted, but it's good to make the ingredients like orange peel powder in advance to save me the bother when I need it :D

DIY Pore Strips

I was watching an Indian film called '3' and admiring how clear the lead actress' skin was

the actress mentioned, Shruti Haasan

 And so I took a good look at my own skin in the mirror, trying to figure out how my skin looked twice as old as her, depsite her being around 10 years older than me.
Then I saw it... my pores! I noticed that the skin without large pores looked much younger than the skin around my nose, chin and (especially) my forehead ><

Sorry for the close-ups hehe but as you can see, I do have large pores and because of these I feel that I have been robbed of that 'youthful glow' that all of my friends seem to have! Aaaaah there's no justice in the world....
But it's not the end of the world! This is my face without any makeup at all (obviously lol) and no moisturiser, so although it looks dull, it's not as bad as in the photos.
The reason for the large pores on my forehead is me! I'm totally to blame; I admit it ><
I had a full fringe for two years, and before that, I had a side-fringe for two years, so I completely neglected my forehead when it came to skincare. And because I have oily skin and hair, I would aoid using moisturiser on it because it would make my fringe look greasy.
Of course, now I'm paying the price for that! Four yeas of neglect is not easy to rewind *sigh* But I've been working hard at that and applying suncream religiously, moisturising and using coconut oil.
Okay but to be fair, I also read that genetics can strongly influence whether or not you have big pore. After looking at my family's faces (as subtly as possible) I saw that we all had big pores... so I suppose I didn't stand a chance!
It's a good thing in that I'm not entirely to blame, but it's also bad cuz it means I can't really do anyting to change this ><

So because of this little discovery of mine I researched about how large pores make your skin look older, and sure enough I found many dermatoligists saying how as we age, our skin loses its elasticity, and because of this loss of elasticity and collagen the pores widen with age.
And being the cheapskate that I am, I went on to look into DIY pore strips and came across several remedies such as multani mitt and egg whites
However, I also came across Michelle Phan's DIY pore strips recipe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bjOB4zS0uE

So I went to buy in some gelatin in B&M.
Um they didn't actually have any of the unflavoured stuff, so I went for lemon flavoured jelly...which I'm now thinking was a big mistake seeing as it has to be mixed with milk o_O

Okay I've made up the mixture and applied it ot my face! The wait begins!!

The ingredients I used were a teaspoon of milk and this packet of jelly cubes (I know it's the wrong type, and right now with this on my face I have the sneaking suspicion that I just made jelly and out it on my face to sit!) which I chose for their lemon flavour. Foolish me looked at the strawberry, orange and lemon packets and chose lemon because of its skin lightening and pore tightening qualities.
It doesn't even have real lemon in it... but oh well it's been bought and is currently sitting on my face so I'll stop being so bitter about this :D

Once I microwaved the milk and jelly together it turned out like this:

So i just gave it a good stir with a makeup brush I don't use :D

I tested it out on my hand to feel the temperature and it was fine so I went ahead and blobbed it on my face

I also put it on my chin cuz I have big pores there, but it didn't show up well in the picture and it wasn't even worth posting so... hahah
The longer I sit here and feel my face, the more I'm becoming convinced that I just made jelly and put it on my face... tell me it isn't so! D:

This stuff isn't hardening up like Michelle Phan's, and it's squidgy to touch...
Well...at least we know now that you shouldn't try to substitute ingredients like jelly :D
I'm still gonna see how this works out, cuz I'm really curious!!




Yeah it's official...I just made face jelly ><
It didn't work...never try this!!
hahahaha but it smelt nice and lemony fresh~~
It peeled off (eventually!!) like this:

It took me over an hour waiting on this jelly... dayuum
and the jelly was soooo hard to get off, so I just washed my face in the end and got rid of all the gunk.

DIY pore strip...fail!

About Me

Hello, 你好, 안녕하세요~
Well it's my first time doing this, so I think I should make my first post about me? Maybe? Hehe okay, I convinced me ^^
I'm called Aoife, I'm 18 and I'm from Ireland :D
Although I live in Ireland now, after university I hope to be teaching English abroad so I can finally go to South Korea (especially Busan) and Taiwan (for Taipei). So because of this, I study Korean...sometimes ^^;;
I became really interested in weird DIY and natural beauty things (although it never seems to transform me in the way I hoped grr >< ) around two years ago when I started watching Korean dramas (and then many other Asian dramas) and noticed that the actresses always seemed to have perfect skin! 
From watching these dramas, I saw amazing hairstyles and clothes too, and I felt really jealous seeing how pretty these actresses were and how they suited anything they wore >< 
So I decided to try it out myself, and began growing my hair (a work in progress) and trying different styles
These days, I'm getting kind of obsessed with Indian beauty secrets, and am in the process of drying out orange skins to grind for face masks, and I'm eagerly waiting the delivery of some multani mitti ^^
So if any of these things pay off, I'll write it up here :D
Thanks for reading! If you didn't...I can't really say I blame ya ^^;