These cute jars of Holiday Parfait Face Mask make fantastic gifts as well as fantastic face masks. Layers of different colours of clay stack up in cute jars for the perfect stocking stuffer that’ll pamper the pores of anybody lucky enough to be on your gifting list. The silky combination of two relatively gentle clays means this blend is great for most complexions, and it smells wonderfully of sweet vanilla and bright pine. Yum!
To get the two layers, I used two different kinds (and colours) of clay: white kaolin and French green. They’re both soft and light, they contrast nicely (with Christmassy colours!), and unlike most red clays (which could be a tempting alternative for the holiday look), French green clay does not turn your bathroom sink into something that looks like a murder scene. Another bonus of the white + green combo is that the final product is a pale green, whereas red + green or red + green + white ends up a gross, murky brown that is none too appealing!
For the white part, I blended white kaolin clay, silk peptides, dried honey, and some benzoin essential oil together. The green layers are French green clay, calendula petals, and some pine essential oil. Both layers have some pomegranate oil added for extra hydration, but you are free to use any low-colour carrier oil you have on hand (grapeseed, safflower, sunflower, jojoba, and sweet almond oil would all be good choices—anything highly pigmented like sea buckthorn will tint the white layer). Each part is blitzed together in your DIY only coffee grinder before layering them up in some cute jars.
I used some wee 45mL/1.5 fl oz hexagonal glass jars for mine, but you could easily use any sort of transparent jar you have on hand. I’d recommend choosing something with a wide enough opening that the clay mixture can be scooped in and out, which will make creating the layers easier for you, and gives the mixture a better chance of not being shaken into homogeneous oblivion when the end user tries to get it out of the jar.
As you’re creating the layers I recommend using your spoon to ensure you have full coverage of each layer, and then lightly rapping the jar on the counter a few times before continuing. The more tightly packed the powder is, the longer the layers will survive, and the better they’ll do if the jar gets tossed around.
I tested this Holiday Parfait Face Mask the day after a Halloween party that saw me sporting some pretty serious face paint that was hanging around in my pores, even after a shower and several face washes. My skin was none too thrilled with me after being washed eight times in a row, but I needed to get that face paint out of my pores. This mask was perfection for that. Thanks to the blending in the coffee grinder it whisks into water really easily, making an incredibly silky, creamy face mask. Once it dries (which doesn’t take too long), it washes off gently, with fairly minimal exfoliation, which I really appreciated. It feels wonderfully luxurious and left my skin feeling fantastic, with no traces of black face paint in any of my pores. The redness from the mask didn’t last long at all, and my complexion was almost instantly brightened. Score!
Holiday Parfait Face Mask
White layers
2.5 tbsp white white kaolin clay (USA / Canada)
1/4 tsp silk peptides (wondering about alternatives?)
1/4 tsp dried honey (optional)
2 “blobs” benzoin essential oil/resinoid
15 drops pomegranate oil (can substitute any low-colour carrier oil like jojoba oil (USA / Canada), grapeseed oil, safflower oil, or sweet almond oil (USA / Canada))Green layers
3 tbsp French green clay
1/2 tsp calendula petals
10 drops pine essential oil
15 drops pomegranate oil (can substitute any low-colour carrier oil like jojoba oil (USA / Canada), grapeseed oil, safflower oil, or sweet almond oil (USA / Canada))Combine the ingredients for the white layers in your DIY only coffee grinder. Put on your dust mask and blend everything together for 30 seconds. Leave the lid on the coffee grinder for at least five minutes before removing it to allow the dust to settle down a bit. Once five minutes has passed, rap the lid of the grinder sharply with the back of a spoon to knock down any powder that has crawled up the sides and is clinging to the lid. Transfer the powder to a small dish.
Do the same for the ingredients for the green layers.
Once you have both colours blended up, spoon a layer of each into your jars, alternating colours, until your jars are full. Voila!
To use, measure 5mL/1 tsp of warm water in a small dish. Using a small whisk, blend in enough of the clay mixture to get a creamy paste. I recommend scooping down, rather than across, to try and get a bit of both colours. After mixing the clay with water, use the mask immediately.
This mask mix should last at least a year if kept cool and dry. Once hydrated, it might last a day, but I wouldn’t count on it. This mix should occupy ~130mL of space, though that can depend on how fluffy your clays get with blending, and with how much you tamp the mixture down. I filled two 45mL jars and had enough left over for two masks.
If you don’t have dry honey you can use raw honey at the time of hydration—1/8 tsp per mask or so is a good starting place. You can also leave the honey out entirely, but I found the mask to be very powdery without it, so whenever I moved my face with it on I ended up dumping powder onto my top!
You can use any other bright coniferous essential oil (fir, spruce) instead of the pine.
What a brilliant and wickedly cheap idea for stocking stuffers! Did you get this idea from that cookie in a jar powder thingie that’s been going around Facebook?
I’ve a massive box started with Christmas presents. This way, if I need a present fast, I just reach in and grab something. and an easy way to make this unisex, I can add a drop of cedar essential oil into the green!
Perhaps? I’m sure I’ve seen it on Pinterest, too, but it’s just lurking in the depths of my brain—it wasn’t really a conscious thing 😛 Also, I’d say the pine in this already makes it smell pretty unisex… but I’ve yet to meet a man who will willingly do a face mask, so that might not really matter lol.
Chinese men are very feminine but from what the guys tell me, only for things very boldly labeled designed for men. Any time I’ve given them something, I actually have to sit down with my printer and print up a label so their egos are assured that I made it for men in mind.
Which I never do. I make things with me in mind! Men are silly.
I am loving the little powdered sea buckthorn berries in mine! I rub the mask in a little as I apply it for some lazy exfoliant action.
Ha! How funny, but also convenient as it doubles your gifting population 😉
Hi Marie this sounds like an awesome recipe that I would love to try! Thank you so much for sharing! Quick question…are silk peptides the same as allantoin and can they be interchanged in recipes?
No, allantonin is something of a repair agent whilst silk is more along the lines of humacant and provides some awesome slide.
Thanks so much Penny, therefore allantoin should be used in face serums and cream to be beneficial?
I’ll use allantoin in pretty much anything that will be on my skin for any period of time that contains water (as it is water soluble)—face masks included!
Penny is bang on! I would also add that silk does, to some degree, help with healing, though it’s not as soothing as allantoin, which you’ll often find in things like diaper creams 🙂
Well I’m dumb. I decided to try blitzing my sea buckthorn seeds/fruit in the coffee grinder as I wanted to see if I could make a powder out of it for the recipe.
Woot!mit worked! So started adding in my clays, I added in some moringa powder to the green to try to deepen it up a little, and when I went to look at oil options on your ingredient list…. I couldn’t find your pomegranate seeds and how much you used! I’m flipping through all my notes and thinking you might have taken it out. I’m scrambling like a lunatic.
Then red the cranberry clay recipe and the brain light went on. So just shrugged and worked with it! They blitzed up so small I cannot even really see them. But I love this mask! I added some honey and some fresh cream as my liquid as I’ve like 9L of cream in my fridge to use up. Im loving it! And I’ve already friends lining up asking for this as a Christmas present.
Hummm…. I wonder if I did coloured layers of citric acid and baking soda and clay if that would work as a foot bath for Christmas presents? Hummm. Will have to go back to the lab.
Ahah! How funny 😛 I”d be lying if I said I’d never done anything similar LOL. It sounds like your final product is fantastic, and I am so envious of all that heavy cream . Enjoy!
The citric acid/baking soda thing would work, though there’s really no need to keep them separate as long as they are dry (like bath bombs) as they look pretty much identical. I’d probably mix them together and then divide that up and colour those parts, that way you could always be sure your users were going to get some fizzing!
This is a great recipe idea! I can’t wait to try it.
Just a suggestion, you should avoid metals coming into contact with your clays when mixing with liquid, since the clay is negatively charged, using metals will activate it. You want to use that charge for removing impurities and toxins from your skin.
Thanks! I actually spoke with an expert on clays, and the whole metal/charge/NOOOOO thing is wildly overblown and only possibly true under conditions that we don’t want in our skin care products (extreme pH).
Hi Marie! So weird, I got an email for your reply just now but looks like it was from January. I’ve since read up a bunch on this too. My new understanding, it looks like there is actually no problem with the dry clay coming into contact with the metal. Thanks for the link, interesting enough to hear from a professor.