I absolutely love toner. It’s a super easy way to give my face a quick cleaning and refreshing, especially after a walk on a hot summer day. Despite the leakage risks, I always travel with it—a small bottle makes for a nice, refreshing break on long flights. Unfortunately, it can also make for a lemongrass scented soggy mess if something gets bumped the wrong way. Hence, dry toner tablets!
Now, these tablets are loaded with all kinds of good things. The cucumber peel extract acts as the astringent, as well as having anti-inflammatory properties and being loaded with vitamins and minerals. Green tea has lots of anti-oxidants, and vitamin C, bee pollen, and honey are just all-around great for the skin. Baking soda gives these tablets a bit of a fizz when they get wet, thanks to the acidity of the vitamin C.
I have a confession to make—these failed to stay tablets the first time. After I took the time to carefully form about a hundred little tablets, they quickly puffed into little piles of dust, like a dried out sand castle.
So, I thought about the differences between something like a bath bomb, which sticks together when you spritz it with water, and my toner, err, powder, which definitely did not. The difference is that bath bombs are made mostly from water soluble ingredients, like Epsom salts and citric acid. So, when they get a bit damp, they start to dissolve into one another, and as they dry, they fuse together, like a sugar cube. The majority of the ingredients in this toner powder weren’t water soluble, so the tablets went the way of a sandcastle on a hot day.
Time for a fix! Loading the toner with sugar didn’t seem like a good idea unless I wanted to be chased by bees all day long, so salt it was. Salt is naturally antibacterial, boosts circulation, and helps soften the skin, so it seemed like a good addition. I halved the recipe with salt, and blitzed it all together in my coffee grinder to ensure the mixture was evenly textured.
A funny thing happened when I added the water—instead of getting a slightly damp powder, I got a dough, like play dough. Huh. Cool. With that texture you’ve got two different options for forming your tablets—you can pinch off sections and roll them into little balls, or you call roll them out into long worms, and use a knife to trim off little snippets. Your choice!
Toner Tablets
1 tbsp cucumber extract
1 tsp bee pollen
¼ tsp vitamin C
½ tsp honey powder
1 tsp green tea extract
2 tbsp table salt5 drops lavender essential oil
3 drops tea tree essential oil
10 drops liquid bee propolisWater, as needed
Blitz all the dry ingredients together into a fine powder. Add the essential oils and propolis, and blend.
Then, slowly add water, drop by drop, blending as you go, until you have a dough. Chances are there will be too much for the coffee grinder to handle, so you’ll have to scoop everything out and knead in the rest of the water until you have a play dough texture. Be careful with the water, it’s easy to add too much and end up with a sticky, gooey mess.
You can shape the tablets one of two ways; pinch off small pieces and roll them into little balls, or roll out little worms and trim off little bits.
Lay everything out on sheets of wax paper and let the tablets dry.
To use, place a tablet in the bottom of a cup or small jar with a bit of water (maybe 10–15mL, 2–3tsp). Let dissolve, swirling to encourage things along. Swab across your face with a re-useable cotton pad or washcloth when it’s all dissolved.
You may find one tablet makes too much toner (or that your toner is too concentrated), in which case you can just pick out the tablet after enough has dissolved, let the tablet dry out again, and use the rest of it later. Or, if you know you’ll be staying in one place for a while, you could just make a bit more and have it pre-made for the next few days.
What a really neat and cool idea!
Thanks! I have to admit I was pretty pleased with myself for coming up with this, lol 😛
These are so handy! I usually carried a spritzer bottle with water or some type of “refreshing” liquid to spray onto my face throughout the day but it became a bit cumbersome… and a bit difficult to explain why I was walking around with a random bottle of liquid all the time lol. Summer is really starting to set in down here in Louisiana and things can go from “put-together” to “hot mess” rather quickly. How do you come up with such great ideas?
I’m so jealous that you live somewhere that makes carrying a spritzer bottle around necessary! We might have 5 days like that a year here. Sigh. More often than not I should be carrying around an electric heating pad, lol 😛
I think I thought of this after seeing Lush sells toothpaste tablets, and I got to thinking about all the other liquid/gooey things in my life that are a pain to travel with! Thanks for stroking my ego 😀
Oooo, I love this idea! I often prefer toner while traveling since face-washing can be rather time consuming on the fly. While I don’t have any travel plans (boooo!) for a while, these would even be great for weekend trips to the cottage where water-usage is limited 🙂 Have I told you lately that you’re a genius?
I agree! Though I generally prefer toner all of the time, not just while traveling 😛 It’s perfect for a refreshing burst after a bike ride in the summer! And… awww, shucks *blush* 😛
Love this idea for travel.
Thanks, Betty! I am looking forward to testing these out on my travels this summer 🙂
We’re an outdoor family and I LOVE this idea. Tablets will pack in a backpack much better than my regular bottle of apple cider vinegar. I’m going to have to try it. Thank you!
Yay! I’m thrilled to be able to help 🙂 Enjoy all your outdoor adventures! You might consider leaving the EOs out to reduce the risk of critters going for them in the dark of night 😉
ok i will do that
Wonderful idea. Can’t wait to try this.
Thanks! Let me know how they work for you.
these sound great i will have to try and make these myself!!!
Do it, they’re so fun—like adult playdoh!
thats great!! ive made somethings some are fun some are not!!
Oooh, I’ve definitely been there lol! So many terrible messes in the end lol… I’m not sure my blender will ever be the same 😛
I have just found this blog and I’m quite excited. It’s right up my alley! These toner tablets look great. I could see other ingredients like aloe or witchhazel in there too! Keep up the good work!
I’m so glad you found my site, Jane 🙂 I would LOVE to add aloe or witch hazel to these—have you ever seen them as powdered ingredients? They would be amazing additions to my pantry (which is definitely not full enough… no siree, haha).
Hi! You can get aloe vera powder. Not sure about witchhazel…Don’t worry, I also have numerous shelves with weird and wonderful ingredients!
We have a secondary kitchen in our basement from the days when the house was suited… it is mine now! Muahahahahahah… I have an ingredient problem 😛
This is such a good idea! how do you come up with this!? I travel alot and my toner is the one thing that causes me the most trouble, so this is just perfect! one thing though, when making them should I use sea salt or just any old salt?
I think this particular idea was inspired by Lush—I saw they sold toothpaste tablets and started thinking about all the different things that would be better for travel if they were dry. Toner came straight to mind because I’ve definitely had it spill all over my suitcase before lol.
For the salt—I imagine sea salt will have some extra minerals and what not that would be a great addition, just be sure to use the finely ground stuff if you can’t blend everything in a coffee grinder first. You need the salt to be very well incorporated so you can make the dough and form the balls 🙂
Thank you so much! I’ll have to try this out soon!
Have fun with them—but maybe recruit a friend for rolling out all the little balls, there sure are a lot of them 😉
These look amazing but I’m a vegan, any substitutes for all the bee products????
Just leave ’em out unless you want to go out and gather a bunch of pollen from all the flowers around your house 😉
Ok, so I just found your site from the DIY mineral veil for your face. I need to stop clicking on other posts because my list of “ingredients” to buy keeps growing!
These look too cool, I’m going to have to try!
Awesome! That mineral veil is seriously one of my favourite inventions—it just erases pores! And I know what you mean about ingredients… I have a serious problem with them 😛 Have fun and let me know what you try and how it works out, I love getting feedback!
Thank you very much for your site ,its amazing 🙂
can you till me how can i make cucumber extract?
I prepair every thing to make and i will com back to till you how it was ,*-*
I buy my cucumber extract from New Directions Aromatics. You might be able to make your own by dehydrating the peels and grinding them up, but I’ve never tried it so I don’t know.
Thank you v.much
i will try : )
🙂
i need to try this for my skin by me knees i have really darks in there ugh getsd so aggrevating
This recipe makes me want to cry! I love love LOVE the concept of it, but it doesn’t love me. lol
I’m on my 4th attempt at making these and so far (4th is still drying) none of them have worked.
I don’t have the bee propolis so I haven’t added that to any batch.
The first batch, I added magnesium and aloe vera powder, those haven’t and never will dry. They formed into a gummy scary pan of ick.
The second batch, I forgot the essential oils, but I added baking soda, and they got closer to drying.
The 3rd batch I added the oils and they dry into the consistancy of a stale bendy cookie.
This 4th batch that I just got finished making and forming the tablets, I took the magnesium (I think that’s what is making it gummy and soft) out but left the aloe vera powder in, and started blending it in my bullet…it was pretty crumbly, so I added half the baking soda (I planned on leaving it out entirely). As I formed the tablets, they got pretty crumbly pretty quick, so I don’t know if they’ll stay solid.
Is the bee propolis that important to the mix that’s making it not work? Or should I omit the aloe vera? I want them to work, but for some reason this recipe doesn’t like me. lol
Oh no! I’m sorry to hear this is giving you trouble 🙁
The bee propolis really shouldn’t be the lynch pin of this recipe by any means, so I doubt that is it.
It’s the water soluble ingredients that hold the balls together—mostly the salt, but the honey and vitamin C as well. Mine didn’t work at all until I added the salt, though. You don’t mention salt at all in your comment, so if you are leaving it out, put it in! That’s the lynch pin.
I would honestly just try the recipe as written first and get that to work—leave out the magnesium (I really don’t have any experience working with pure magnesium so I can’t say what it might be doing to the recipe) and the aloe vera powder.
Let me know how your next batch turns out!
Yeah, I just went down and checked on them and they’re still stale cookie. I even have the dehumidifier on. Lol
I am adding salt and honey power so it must be that pesky aloe vera powder. I’ll try it again without it and the baking soda and go from there. Thanks 🙂
That’s so strange—I never would have guessed aloe vera powder would be problematic here. What is the salt ratio you’re using? Is it still roughly half of the recipe, even with your additions?
Also, if you’re using the vitamin C, if you add baking soda the two will react together (base + acid), so I wouldn’t recommend doing both 🙂
Yep..I adjusted the amount of salt. It could very well be the baking soda then. I was going to omit it but it was so crumbly that i added it. It seemed to do the bath bomb thing and fuse everything together more than salt alone. The first batch was baking soda free and it feels sort of like fruit leather (if you’re at all familiar with that product its pretty ew lol).
Im almost positive the magnesium was making it to oily. I just thought to add it because it’s supposed to be pretty good for you. Im just gonna make a seperate serum with it I think.
Hmm… just another thought… how humid is wherever you live? Could it be that the fruit leather type ones were more or less “correct”, but they just couldn’t dry out because of the ambient humidity?
I followed the recipe exactly on the last batch except for the bee propolis.i don’t know if the alcohol in the tincture has anything to do with it, but I didn’t have it so I left it out. As for humidity it was humid when I made the multiple batches but after the first one we busted out the dehumidifier and had them drying right next to it so the room was extremely dry. Im just gonna call it a loss. I ran out of cucumber peel trying to make them and I don’t see myself ordering anymore for my upcoming projects. Ah well. Lol. Yours still look great though! Lol
Hmmmm. Argh! My bee propolis has no alcohol in it (just water & glycerin), so that wouldn’t be it. I wish we could figure this out! I shall keep you posted if I have any more brain waves on the matter…
Well I tried again and they were even worse than the first batch. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but I think I’m gonna stop wasting my ingredients for now…its getting kind of pricy lol
Oh no! Crap. Just as a last ditch attempt, I’m going to link you off to the product pages of all the different ingredients I used, so we can be sure we’re talking about all the same ingredients.
Are these all the same ingredients you used? Do you notice any big differences?
Hello! Just came on here for some inspiration for toners. I was wondering, is there anyway to make this without the 10 drops of bee propolis? Or is there a substitute? Thank you!
You definitely can, Kylee 🙂
Hi Marie! Just some quick questions:
1. How long do you estimate that these will last?
2. Would I be able to hand mix the ingredients until I get a nice smooth mixture or do you recommend the grinder?
Thanks!!
Well, I’ve got plenty left from when I first made these, and they’re perfectly fine. I’d say at least a year as long as they stay nice and dry 🙂 And yes, I think you could knead it together by hand—in fact, it’s probably a better idea than using a coffee grinder as clean up was a major pain. Otherwise, a food processor or a set of electric beaters are also good options. I would recommend grinding the ingredients first, though, for a nice, smooth texture 🙂
That’s such a wonderful idea, I tried it two weeks ago as I’m leaving for a month of backpacking soon,they are definitely not as elegant as yours but hey, they do work really well!!
I saw that you wrote about citric acid and bath bombs, is there a reason why you didn’t use that option to make the toner? Is it because citric acid would not be good for the face skin?
I’m so thrilled these little toner tablets are making it into your backpack for your adventures! Have fun 🙂
Citric acid is acidic like vitamin C is, but they aren’t the same thing. Vitamin C, as the name would suggest, is a vitamin (and one that’s particularly good for regeneration), whereas citric acid is just acidic 🙂
Would anything water soluble work such as silk powder in place of salt?
You could likely get away with anything water soluble that’s crystalline—for example, sugar or Epsom salts. Sugar would be a rather sticky alternative, though. In my experience silk just vanishes in water, and it would be a very expensive alternative to dirt cheap table salt.
any chance you measured the pH of this when you made it?
Nope, sorry! It would vary by dilution level, so it’s hard to say.
I don’t see baking soda in the recipe box. After reading all the previous comments I still want to try to make this…do you have a final formulation for me (and others)?
I’m sorry, I don’t know how great your memory is 3 years back for perhaps a teaspoon of baking soda, but mine is not perfect! I have no idea why it’s mentioned in the preamble and it’s not in the recipe. I don’t remember, and I have nothing else to refer back to. I’m inclined to think the recipe as published is correct, but again—it’s been three years. I don’t remember :/
This sounds awesome, and I want to try it. However, I’m allergic to pollen. Could I skip the bee pollen and it still be fine? If not, do you have a suggestion of something I could use as a substitution for the Bee Pollen?
Yup! Skip away 🙂 I’d make up the difference with more cucumber and green tea extracts 🙂
Hi Marie! How many tablets does the recipe above make? And how long can you keep the water in the fridge? Thank you 🙂
Would it matter if I use botanical hydrosols in place of water? Or it wouldn’t do anything since it’s just going to dry out eventually anyway?
Hi Marie,
Many years later, I was wondering if you would consider re-doing this with your knowledge now. I love this idea, but I think you could make a much more amazing version of this with what you’ve learned over the years :).
Thanks!