Ingrown hairs suck. After investing time and energy into looking presentable in a bikini, they can foil you like a stubborn, spoiled child. Grr.
I’ve read a lot of tips for fixing ingrowns: moisturize, exfoliate, blah blah blah. Doesn’t really seem to do much. But I finally found something that does. Something that speeds up the healing, kills the redness, takes down any swelling, kills any infections, and works in half an hour. Sound too good to be true? It’s not. I guess it’s your lucky day.
The key is a mask. Much like the face masks I’ve been raving about, but on another part of your body. Spread it on and leave it until it dries. Then wash it off in the tub. Follow up with a bit of lotion or body butter, and you’ll notice results immediately. You’ll notice even more improvement by the next morning. I do these masks weekly, with my face mask (I use the same mask recipe for both). I’ll spare you the trauma of before and after pictures, so I guess you’ll have to take my word for it and try it yourself. You won’t regret it, I promise!
Anti Ingrowns Mask
1/3 cup clay (I use a mixture of French green, French red, and rhassoul)
2 tsp bee pollen (optional)
2 tsp powdered seaweed (optional)
½ tsp dried honey (or 1 tsp normal honey)
¼ tsp vitamin C (optional)5 drops Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
5 drops bee propolis (optional)
½ tsp dead sea mud (optional)
Essential oils of chammomile, helichrysum, tea tree, lavender, and patchouli for a total of ~10 dropsMix all the dry ingredients together. Add the wet ingredients, and then add warm water, a little at a time, until you have a nice creamy paste. Spread over the affected area and let dry (~30 minutes). Rinse off and moisturize.
Holy Moly! I can’t believe I’ve just stumbled onto your amazing site… I love love love diy stuff and lately have been more focused on the body types and was looking for a way to make some lovely, durable, reusable, organic face pads! Hurray for your little sewing tricks! Thank you soo much! I can’t wait to try all of your recipes!!
xox holly fay
Thanks for stopping by, Holly! Let me know how the reusable face pads go 🙂
this will be wonderful for my teen son!
Just wondering, where do you get the clay? Thanks! N<
I get all of my clays at New Directions Aromatics (http://newdirectionsaromatics.ca/). They’ve got American, Australian, and UK locations as well as the Canadian, which I love. My favourite clay is French Green. The smallest size you can get is 500g, which is quite a lot, but I promise you’ll end up using it for all kinds of wonderful masks and it will vanish before you know it!
Is purchasing all of these ingredients expensive?
Debbie—If you get them online from a good, well-priced supplier, it’s all very reasonable! The clay is the most important ingredient, and it generally runs ~$12/500g (and that is a LOT of clay! Maybe 1 cubic liter). Pretty much everything else is optional, though useful. You probably already have liquid honey, and if you do, just use that instead of the powdered. If you’ve got vitamin E and/or C tablets, open/crush those into the mix. Use your favourite antibacterial EOs if you don’t have the ones I listed and you’re golden!
I was wondering if you put this on before or after shaving?..
I’ll generally do it the day after shaving 🙂
I can’t wait to try this – have never found anything that works very well for ingrown hairs, hope this works for me!
I was so thrilled to have this work after trying it… I’ll admit I definitely felt like I was going out on a limb as I sat in the bathroom with green paste spread down under, lol. But because the clay really helps improve circulation you’ll find things heal much faster, and when you scrub it off you get a great bit of exfoliation as well, and that also helps. It’s the best thing I’ve ever found for ingrowns!
I am so glad I stumbled upon this recipe. Being a man that ‘grooms’, I have a terrible problem with ‘ingrowns’. It sucks… REALLY sucks! I’ve tried all sorts of slaves, creams, oils…. nothing worked. I will definitely give this a try! Thank you so much for this!
Let me know how it works on your face, I’ve never managed to convince someone with beard-growing abilities to give this a try 😛 I sure love it, though!
Where do you buy your bee propolis? There are many options, do you get one with alcohol in the ingredients?
Thanks love your blog.
I got the liquid stuff (it’s in vegetable glycerin) from a local shop called The Beehive. I also bought some raw stuff (it looks like a little jar of dirt clods) at the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto. Most bee shops or stands will carry it, or you can try a health food store. I would always avoid stuff with alcohol in it as alcohol dries out the skin 🙂 Thanks for reading!
where do you buy your ingredients from?
As noted above, I buy almost everything from New Directions Aromatics and Saffire Blue. Thanks for reading!
Wow, this looks great! I would love a solution for ingrowns! I don’t have the clays that you mentioned but I do have bentonite clay- would that work in this?
I just found your site, and I’m liking what I see so far! 🙂
From what I’ve read bentonite is all around awesome, so I think it’ll be a great substitute 🙂 Thanks for reading and let me know how it goes!
I don’t get these very often so I’m wondering how long this would store for? I would really love to try it, but don’t want to waste anything if it’ll go bad between uses. Looking forward to doing more of your neat tips and tricks!
The dry mixture will keep almost indefinitely 🙂 if you have a DIY designated coffee grinder, you can thoroughly blend the essential oils and propolis into the dry powder for storage as well. Then, all that remains to do when you want to do a mask is adding the warm water (and mud, if you’re using it).
Would this work for scalp too? My husband gets very painful ingrown hairs at the base of his neck.
Thanks
Yes, definitely! I’d just be prepared to wash it out in the shower as dried clay on hair doesn’t come out easily, so you’ll want to re-wet it in the shower.
Hi,
I have a terrible problem with ingrown hairs and I love to pick them. I hope this works for me.
But why are some ingredients optional? What are they for, powdered seaweed and bee pollen for example? Also, can I replace powdered seaweed with seaweed extract?
Thanks a lot!
Hi Shalini! I made those ingredients optional to try and make the recipe more accessible. They contribute beneficial vitamins and minerals, and help encourage healing, but the clay really does the bulk of the work, so if you can only get one or two ingredients, you should get 90% of the benefit without them 🙂
What kind of seaweed extract are you talking about? As long as it’s just seaweed, more or less, it should be ok.
it’s a total of 10 dops of each essential oil? or is 2 drop of each making a total of 10
You’re looking for a total of around 10 drops of essential oils—just use whichever you have on hand 🙂
Hi Marie,
Just wondering if I can use multani mitti for the clay? I live in India and can’t seem to get any other kind of clay. I was also wondering how long this keeps. Could I make a batch and store it do you think? I live by the beach and our climate is 80% beach weather aka hot and humid so this lil’ gem is going to be my new best friend 🙂
Hi Gazelle! For this recipe you can use multani mitti instead 🙂 Read this re: mixing face masks ahead of time.
What else can this mask be used for? I sure had a lot left over and don’t want this to go to waste!! I used bentonite clay, german chamomile and lavender eos.
Your face is a good place to start 🙂 you can also have a facial party with friends 🙂 it’s not going to keep more than a couple days in the fridge, unfortunately, so in the future it mig be a good idea to make a half or quarter batch depending on how much you need. I tend to pack mine on pretty thick and cover a fairly wide area with this, hence the batch size. Happy making!