A couple months ago I made a pretty awesome discovery—yogurt + my face. It’s not so much the yogurt as the probiotics that live in it; millions of little happy bacteria, living some sort of pastoral life in my fermented milk product. Well, that’s how I like to imagine them, at least. I figure Belle from Beauty and the Beast is just about to frolic through the field they graze in, singing about how she wants so much more than this provincial liiiiiiiife (why yes, I did recently go see the new live action version… why do you ask?). Anyhow; this mask. This mask combines probiotic goodness with soothing oats and pore de-junking clay for some awesome probiotic skin goodness. Prepare to fall in love.
There’s just four ingredients in this mask, and one of them is water, so it’s pretty darn simple to make. You’ll start by thinning out a bit of yoghurt with some water. Make sure it’s plain yoghurt with lots of probiotics. I used fat free ’cause that’s typically what I have kicking around, but I think a fuller fat yoghurt would also be delightful.
For the powdery part we’re blending in some colloidal oatmeal and French green clay. Colloidal oats help soothe the skin and give the mask a bit of a gel-like texture, which is pretty groovy. They also help prevent it from getting too tight and itchy, which I always appreciate as I’m very prone to getting distracted and leaving my mask on for forty minutes.
I chose French green clay for this mask as my skin absolutely loves it, but if you have a different smooth, light clay (kaolin, another French clay, some of the lighter Australian ones, zeolite) you prefer, feel free to use that. You could use bentonite as well, but keep in mind you’ll need a fraction of the amount the recipe calls for as bentonite is insanely absorbent.
Once you’ve got that handful of ingredients all that’s left is whisk, apply, dry, and rinse off! I’ve found that introducing probiotics into my skincare routine has greatly reduced breakouts and sped up healing times, which are pretty much my top two goals with any skin care thing, so WOOOO! Enjoy 🙂
Yogurt Oat Face Mask
~ 1 tsp plain yogurt (make sure it’s the kind with probiotics!)
~1/2 tsp water1/2 tsp colloidal oatmeal (USA / Canada)
~3/4 tsp French green clayWhisk together the yogurt and water to make a thin yogurt slurry sort of concoction. Add the colloidal oats and whisk until smooth. Then, start sprinkling in the clay, a quarter teaspoon at a time, until you have a thick, creamy paste.
Spread the paste over your face and neck, and leave it to dry for approximately twenty minutes before rinsing off and following up with your favourite serum or cream. Enjoy!
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this mask is absolutely loaded with delicious bug food it must be made in single use batches and used immediately. No amount of preservatives will make it safe to store!
I’ve been making a similar mask for years, love full fat Greek yoghurt in it. An extra magical ingredient, sub the water with warmed and slightly diluted honey, Manuka or Leatherwood. It’s the bomb!
OOoooh! I’ll definitely try that for my next mask 😀
Sorry but my english is not great. Also translate from google is awful. When you say sub you mean substitute the water with honey? Or add honey in water? Also how much honey? Btw I can send you Original Greek yoghurt and honey from Creta because i live in Greece !!! :-))) my mom has put yoghurt all this years on her face and now at 78 years seems like she has physical botox. I dont like it because she was smelling a lot btw.
I assume she means a small amount of honey (~1/4 tsp) whisked into the water, to dilute it 🙂 And how lovely that you have such great access to real Greek yoghurt—I’m sure it puts the stuff I buy at Costco to shame
I have been using yogurt in masks since I first started DIYing. I understand the enzymes are supposed to help with exfoliation. We actually started making our own yogurt recently. Which is super easy with an instant pot to use as a yogurt maker.
So what you’re saying is yoghurt is basically a skincare powerhouse? 😉 I’ve definitely made my own yoghurt before, though it’s been a few years. I once tried thickening it with a bit of gelatin and accidentally made yoghurt jello LOL! It was actually really lovely and creamy, despite the suspiciously wobbly appearance
I love full fat Yoghurt on my face in the winter! Prevents the dry patchey stuff going on!
Ohhhh…. never tried kaolin clay and cream. Good idea!
I won’t go as far as to say I’m excited to try this next winter… but I am mildly curious 😛 Mostly because winter can permanently GTFO in my opinion lol.
It took me a full long time to figure out what you were trying to say with the GTFO. I need to spend more time with English speaking folks and not children learning English as a second language!
Maybe you just need to teach them more acronyms!
Hi Marie,
Totally off the subject. But I was wondering how you would feel about a Q and A about your book. Which is by the way AWESOME!!! I’ve never been a real makeup girl. And I am a bit confused. All you fans out there should buy Marie’s book. She is very wonderful. Thanks Marie for all you do.
I totally would be! Just… how? YouTube live? Facebook live? Submit questions over time and I’ll make a video?
Hi Marie,
You tube would be wounderful. can’t wait for your Q and A. It just seems like a lot of titanium dioxide and then again when you mix your color blend. Mine turned out not so powdery.
Lucy
The powders should be pretty creamy—that’s part of what makes ’em luxxy! And the titanium dioxide is what gives us coverage, opacity, and a lot of our adhesion, so it definitely comes up a lot 🙂 Stay tuned to social media for question collection!
I don’t have access to Youtube when people do live stuff due to time zones. But what about this?
Create a blog post/facebook post where the comments are only for questions. People can like the various questions and the top number of questions, youtube video/facebook live thingie. The other ones get kind of put into a biography of Marie blog post.
OOoh, neat! Duly noted 🙂
Yaaas yoghurt. Try turmeric in mask. beautiful glow.
Oooooooooh. One can never have too many face mask ideas!
I have made so many of your recipes with great success.Love your blog and spend hours reading your blog. I’m excited that I found the small whisks in your photo at Sally’s beauty supplies store for only $4.00 each! Thanks for all your hard work.
Yay! I love a good DIY gear find 😀 Happy whisking and thanks for DIYing with me!
I love the concept of a yogurt oat face mask but wonder about making a shelf life stable mask in powder form? Could this recipe be tweaked to include say a milk powder, a powdered probiotic and the rest of the ingredients and let the end user add a splash of water at home to a spoonful of powdered mask for a ‘per use’ application?
You definitely could! I’d probably source yoghurt powder instead of a probiotic powder as most of the probiotic powders are hella ‘spensive and need to be refrigerated.
Any idea as to the qty of yogurt powder or a ratio/percentage?
Eh… not really? Slightly less yoghurt powder, maybe?
Hey Marie! Thank you for your wonderful recipes. About the colloidal oatmeal in this recipe, what kind of stores sell it (other than Amazon)? A health food store?
Lots of DIY suppliers sell it as well—check here for tons 🙂
Hi! Will homemade yoghurt work as well?:) I’m planning to make a yoghurt mask for selling, will phenoxyethanol lengthen its shelf life even a little bit? thanks
Homemade yoghurt will work, but it will still need to be a single use, used at the time it is made, product. This is the sort of product that would require professional stability testing to ensure shelf stability, so if you intend to sell it please be prepared to invest in that testing, perhaps multiple times if your first attempts don’t work.
Hi Marie,
Firstly… thank you so much for all the wonderful recipes and knowledge you share, you have given me lots of confidence to try new things and experiment.
That being said… I need a bit of advice!
I made this clay tonight which was super easy and went on beautifully. Once it had dried I used a hot washcloth to gently remove it and while my skin feels amazing, my face is bright red, like super sunburnt red! It’s not sore, itchy or tight and I’m hoping it’s going to calm down soon but wondered if you might have any insight into why this would happen? I’m not allergic to any of the ingredients.
Thanks for your help!
Hey Alexis! I don’t think anything is wrong here, though perhaps next time you might not want to leave the mask on until it is totally dry. I’ve always attributed the reddening to an increase in circulation as the clay dries and tightens on the skin—I also notice a bit of a warming sensation with it, similar to if you really vigorously rub your skin. The redness should clear pretty quickly, and in the future you can wash off face masks earlier to avoid/tone down the redness 🙂 I hope that helps!
Thanks for replying!
Yes, it calmed down after a couple of hours and my skin continued to feel really lovely, at no point was is sore or uncomfortable (just a bit shocking to look at), definitely not a mask to use before a night out though 🙂
I think you’re right, I left it on until it was completely dry which might have been overkill… lesson learned!
Thanks again,
Alexis
I’m glad to hear it! You can also try incorporating more oil into masks in the future—that can help reduce how dry they get 🙂 Happy masking!