Tera Warner

4 Natural & Wild Beauty Recipes for Better Skin & Radiant Self-Confidence

by | 8 comments

natural skin care, skin care secrets, wild beauty, recipes

4 Natural & Wild Beauty Recipes for Better Skin & Radiant Self-Confidence

– by Heather Gardner

‘Beauty is only skin deep’, or ‘in the eye of the beholder’ we often hear, usually from those who feel that what they have is what they got and must just get on with it. Health seeking heroines like us know differently, of course. It’s not for us to idle ourselves with such self-limiting beliefs, no way! Not us! We empower ourselves to clear skin, clear minds and more importantly a clear conscience, with our smoothie slurping, salad crunching and wild edible munching ways.

We don’t limit ourselves by believing noodles that tell us we can eat fast food, embalm ourselves in chemical creams, inject ourselves with poisons and achieve beauty in the process. Who really wants to play in the park or dance in the dark with someone whose face is held in a permanent grimace of expressionless self-defeat. We can free our bodies through the conscious creation of plant-powered potions and the sun-kissed rosy glow gathered from an afternoon’s petal plucking. We can get giddy with the excited expectation of potion preparing, and the subsequent sublime sensations of smoothing a sexy scented silky lotion over the divine temple of our body, and loving our limbs to loveliness.

Here are some more ways to kiss your skin, from without to within, with the tender loving care bestowed from your greatest admirer…You! Check out the properties of some of the plants we can use from my previous blog as well as the basic recipes for infused oils, and dress your body in a fresh fragrant frock of natural nurturing…because YOU ARE SO VERY WORTH IT!

1. Wild Beauty Cream

Ingredients:

  • 50ml herb infused oil
  • 50ml sun herb tea/water infusion or floral water
  • 15g cacao butter grated

Directions:

Melt the butter in a bain-marie over some warm water (not boiling), add the oil, and whip with a hand whisk. When blended, add the water very slowly, drop by drop, whipping all the while, until you have created a creamy emulsion. You can add a few drops of essential oil, vanilla powder or any raw flavour extract such as from Medicine Flower; a spoon of aloe vera gel or any other skin treats you like. Pour into a clean, dry glass jar. Allow to cool, before adding the lid and label. Write the date on the label and keep in a cool dark place, use within a few weeks.

2. Hair and Body Butter

Ingredients:

  • 150ml coconut oil
  • 30g of fresh herb, flower or plant.

Directions:

Add the ingredients to a bain-marie over some warm water, allow to infuse for 2 hours, keep it on the warm part of a stove of just warm it back up regularly to maintain the temperature. To make it really strong you can repeat this up to 3 times (6 hours) during the course of the day, adding fresh plant material each time. Stir in a few drops of your favourite essential oil, or use the authentic beauty Organic Skin Drops, and allow to cool. Pour into a clean, dry glass jar as above.

3. Wild Soap

Making soap from scratch is a complicated process, but we can ‘remake it’ easily from soap that we already have.

Suggested Ingredients:

  • 200g of a pure, natural soap such as Castile olive oil soap or African black soap
  • honey
  • almond
  • oats
  • ground beans, grind to a powder, but leave gritty
  • dried flowers; rose petals, calendula, chamomile or forage for your own!

Directions:

make your own soapTake 200g of your soap and grate it finely, mix with 100ml of flower or herb infused tea and put in a Bain Marie over some warm water that is simmering very gently, best left on a warm stove or you can just keep the temp very low on your cooker. Leave it to melt, which can take up to an hour. Stir well to mix the soap with the water. When it’s melted you can mix anything into it that you fancy, some honey, almond, oat or beans ground to a powder or left a little gritty. Powdered or whole dried flowers such as rose petals, calendula, chamomile or heather, make it your own!

Pour the mixture into silicon moulds or a parchment lined baking tin. Leave to set for a day or so until hard, remove and cut into squares if you didn’t use individual moulds. Put in a warm place on a wire rack to dry completely, this can take up to several weeks.

4. Wild Beauty Bath

Ingredients:

  • small cloth or muslin bag
  • flower petals, herbs and wild plants
  • rolled oats or groats ground to a powder
  • almond powder
  • seaweed
  • sea salt or Epsom salts
  • grated cacao butter or coconut oil

Directions:

In a small cloth bag or a muslin cloth, place flower petals, herbs and wild plants, rolled oats or groats ground to a powder, almond powder, seaweed, sea salt or Epsom salts, grated cacao butter or coconut oil. Close the bag or tie up the cloth and add to a hot bath, allow the bath to cool and the herbs to infuse, give the bag a squeeze from time to time, then soak yourself with a homemade face mask on!

Meet Heather Gardner

Heather is a lifelong 3rd generation vegetarian, Raw Food and Kundalini Yoga Teacher. She began learning about herbs and wild foods at a young age from her herbalist mother while growing up on a remote mountainside in Ireland and delving into the world of foraging, potion making, nutrition, and raw & living foods as a teenager searching for answers to numerous health challenges. 

At 20 she began learning and experimenting with the Raw Lifestyle and in 2005 she began to move onto a raw diet and has transitioned to a balanced high raw diet over time. She has studied Natural Nutrition and many other healing modalities and has over 15 years experience as a Natural Remedies, Health & Beauty manager and Brand manager within the UK Natural Products industry, and helping people to achieve better health naturally. Now she lives in the west of Ireland, teaching and running her business as well as running after her feisty little toddler! You can visit her fantastic Facebook Page here.