I was never a big facial mask person until I discovered clays.  I fell in love hard, too…and have about 5 different clays sitting in on my shelves at any given time to show for it.

The reason I never wanted to take the time to do masks was because I never really felt like they did anything besides make me feel silly for about 15 minutes.  Which is why I was so shocked with the results I got after trying a simple bentonite clay mask…my skin was –I’m totally serious–luminous.  My skin looked like I had just gotten back from a weekend at some fabulous resort where I slept 12 hours and got waited on hand and foot.  In reality, I had just gotten off a 24 hour shift at work and was up making face masks because I had downed way too much coffee at night.  Needless to say, I became a believer then and there.

As with a lot of my skin care recipes, I’ve beefed up the ingredients list to maximize the benefits.  The spirulina is there to provide a hefty dose of nutrients to your skin while the different clays and activated charcoal function to deep clean your pores and loosen up dead skin cells.  If you don’t have the desire or the budge to get fancy, however, you can just get away from mixing a little bit of water into bentonite clay and you’ll end up with something pretty cool anyways.

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon spirulina powder
• 2 tablespoons bentonite clay
• 3 capsules activated charcoal
• 1 tablespoon multani mati clay (you can substitute another tablespoon of bentonite clay if you can’t find this one…look for it in a local Indian grocery store)
• 1/2 tablespoon titanium dioxide (optional but I included it if you’d like to improve the consistency of this mask…spa-like!)
• water (or aloe vera juice if you want some added good-ness!)

You’ll get about 3 masks with this batch size.  You can always scale up or down according to how fast you use it up.  I recommend doing it once a week for best results.

Steps:

1.  Combine ingredients in a plastic or glass container and mix well with a non-metal spoon (I have a small bamboo one from some serving dishes I have but plastic works just fine as well).  It’s a good idea to keep metal away from clays.

Optional: you can combine the ingredients into a grinder and pulse for a minute or so. This improves the final consistency of the mask but, truth be told, I usually only do this if I’m giving this mask as a gift.

2.  When ready to use the mask, place 1-1.5 tablespoons of the clay mixture in a small dish and add just enough water to make it the consistency of yogurt.

3.  Apply the mask to your face with either your fingers, a cotton pad, or an old makeup brush.

4.  Leave on for 10-15 minutes.  I recommend starting with 10 minutes the first time because it’s quite a powerful mask and if you overdo it for your skin, you’ll end up with a red face for about an hour or so (don’t ask the story behind that one…).

Got any other awesome facial mask idea? Share them below!