Being able to feel as though you look your best at all times is important and believe it or not, coffee can help. Unfortunately, some people don’t have money to invest in expensive luxury beauty items though. There are quite a few ways you can keep yourself looking great without investing s in specialty creams, shampoos, and scrubs
The following guide walks you through a few at-home beauty items using coffee. This benefits you because you can make them yourself for a fraction of what you would pay at the store.
Stimulate Your Hair Growth with Coffee Grounds
After you have made a pot of coffee in the morning, allow the grounds to fully cool and then rub them on your scalp after wetting your hair in the shower. Allow them to sit for ten to fifteen minutes and then wash and condition your hair the same way that you normally do. The caffeine in the grounds stimulates your hair follicles to promote growth. It also helps to remove any built-up skin on the scalp so that the follicles are able to get the oxygen they need to grow. You should scrub your scalp once a week to stimulate your follicles to their fullest.
Create Soft, Supple Lips
During the old winter months, dry, cracked lips are very common. They can not only be unsightly but can also be painful. Fortunately, you can mix two tablespoons of cool used grounds with one tablespoon of olive oil and one tablespoon of honey to make a lip scrub that will leave your lips feeling soft and supple. It’s best to mix the ingredients thoroughly and use the tips of your fingers to rub the scrub on your lips in small circles so that you can gently scrub off any dry skin that you have on your lips.
After scrubbing, leave the mixture in place for a minute or two to stimulate the blood circulation in your lips to make them plump slightly and to allow the olive oil and honey to moisturize the lips. After rinsing the mixture away with warm water, put a balm on your lips to ensure that they stay soft and supple for the rest of the day. You can scrub your lips with the mixture once or twice a day as needed.
Make Your Brunette Hair More Brilliant
If you have brunette hair that you want to look bold and vibrant, mix roughly two tablespoons of cooled coffee grounds with your condition. Rub the conditioner onto your hair and leave it in place for a few minutes. Rinse thoroughly and then wash your hair the way that you normally do. The brown from the grounds can slightly tint your hair so that it looks even browner than normal and provide a lustrous sheen. The grounds can be very course so you want to be sure that you mix grounds with ample amounts of conditioner to ensure that it doesn’t damage your hair. Typically you want to use a ratio of two parts of conditioner to one part of grounds.
You can also soak your hair in cold coffee to boost the color if you want. You need to leave your hair in the brew for thirty minutes to an hour to get the best results and then wash it as you normally do.
Soak Your Feet after a Hard Day
Another one of the amazing coffee benefits that you may not be taking advantage of is a good foot soak. Make a pot and put it and the grounds into a bin that has a few cups of cold water in it. The cold water should cool down the coffee so that it is warm to the touch. You want it to feel warm, but not so hot that it will burn your skin when you touch it. Put your feet into the container and allow your feet to soak for ten to fifteen minutes. Once the skin on your feet is soft, rub the grounds onto the bottoms to remove any dry or dead skin. The grounds act as a natural exfoliator and can leave your feet feeling softer than ever. Once you’ve finished rinsing your feet clean with warm water.
You can also mix the grounds with raw sugar to make an aggressive foot scrub. You can soak your feet in the foot soak and then use a homemade scrub to remove really callused areas of your foot naturally. Mix equal parts of the coffee grounds and raw sugar and then rub them on the areas that are badly callused aggressively. When finished, rinse your feet with warm water. It’s best to wait to scrub your feet with the scrub after you have soaked them so that you can make the hardened areas as tender as possible. This will make scrubbing them easier and far less painful.
Reduce Puffiness under Your Eyes
Having bags under your eyes can make you look older and less awake. Instead of using under eye creams to treat your bags, you can use grounds. Gather grounds after you make a fresh pot. Allow the grounds to cool until they are just warm to the touch. Place them in a fresh filter and wrap a rubber band around the filter to keep the grounds in place. Put a satchel of grounds under the bottom of each eye and leave it in place for ten to fifteen minutes. The coffee benefits are that the caffeine boosts blood circulation under the eyes and can leave you looking more awake while reducing the under eye circles and bags you had before you used the grounds.
Coffee wakes up your body and can help eliminate puffy eyes, too.
Create an Exfoliating Bar of Soap
Many people don’t realize that the bars of soap that they buy at the store can be melted down so that you can add things to them. Place a pan on the stove on low heat and add your favorite bar of soap to the pan. Add a small amount of water and let the bar melt. Once it has melted down, add enough grounds to it so that the mixture reaches a consistency similar to pancake mix. At this point, you can also add essential oils to the soap mixture if you want it to be even more therapeutic for you. Adding lavender can be a very calming option. Pour the mixture into a soap mold or you could simply use waxed cupcake liners placed in a cupcake pan. Once the mixture is in the molds, allow them to cool completely.
As they cool the soap will reconstitute and become solid. You can then take the bar of soap into the shower and use it as an exfoliating bar to stimulate many different areas of your body while cleaning them at the same time. This can be a great way to reduce the appearance of cellulite in a healthy, comfortable way. Caffeine tightens blood vessels to make the cellulite less noticeable.
Soothe Skin after Waxing
Skin can often feel very tender and inflamed after waxing. In order to minimize the pain that you experience after waxing, you can use the grounds to boost blood circulation to the skin and draw out some of the inflammation. The best way to do this is to put grounds and coffee into ice cube trays the night before you plan to be waxed. When you get back from waxing, place the ice cubes into a cloth and lightly rub them on the areas that have been waxed. The cubes will begin to melt from the heat of your body and gently draw the inflammation to the surface of your skin. The grounds in the ice cubes will also help to soothe your skin and leave it feeling less tender.
Rejuvenate Your Skin with a Face Mask
Another great option to use when trying to take advantage of coffee benefits is to make a face mask to use to brighten your skin. You can mix one cup of Greek yogurt, two tablespoons of honey and four tablespoons of used grounds together to make a mask. Rub the mask gently over your face and leave it in place for half an hour. Wash the mixture off and you should notice that your skin appears to be brighter and look more youthful than it did before you did the mask. The caffeine helps to stimulate your skin, while the honey and yogurt moisturize it. Having moisturized skin also helps to create a youthful appearance.
All of these beauty treatments use natural ingredients that are very affordably priced. You should only do one or two of the treatments at a time to see how your body reacts to them. This allows you to pinpoint what did or didn’t work for you so that you know which treatments to use again in the future. You want to be sure that you look and feel your best at all times and using ingredients that you already have at home can be a great way to do it.
