HOW TO MAKE ALOE VERA AT HOME

By Simon Nyambura

<simon.njugunan@gmail.com>

 

Instructions

Aloe Vera Gel is one of the easiest natural cosmetics to be made at home and is known for its properties to cool the skin and help against acne, minor burns and itchy rashes. While ready-made products only contain small amounts of actual Aloe Vera and instead a lump sum of unwanted, often skin irritating chemicals, you can be sure to use a perfectly organic and hundred percent natural product, if you make your own Aloe Vera Gel at home.

Take about 2-3 leaves of a fresh Aloe Vera plant. If you don’t have a plant at home, you can nowadays get the leaves cut and packed in many supermarkets or organic stores. I personally highly recommend growing Aloe Vera at home. It is an extreme resistant and easy to grow plant that only requires a warm, half-sunny place and watering every few days. Only like this you can be sure to be using a pesticide free product - and after all that is what we want for our sensitive skin!

1. Cut the leaf with a sharp knife close to the stem. The yellow liquid that comes out of the cut tissue can be skin irritating, so make sure you wash your Aloe Vera leaves ell before further processing.

2. Cut along the flat side of the leaf and carefully lift it up like a lid. You then can easily scratch out the content of the leaf with a teaspoon directly into your blender. Just make sure you have washed your hands well before dealing with the Aloe Vera Gel so that it will stay fresh longer. If small pieces of leaf tissue (green chunks in your otherwise clear gel) have fallen into the blender, just remove them with a clean spoon before adding the other ingredients.

Make sure the unprocessed Aloe Vera Gel is clear and not discoloured, otherwise dispose it and try a fresh leaf.

The unprocessed Aloe Vera Gel should be clear

3. You then add the content of 1 Vitamin E capsule into the blender which will enhance the positive effects of the Aloe Gel on your skin. Crush 1 Vitamin C pill and add it – this will help to preserve your gel longer. The Vitamins we have used in this recipe were bought at a regular pharmacy and contain 400mg of Vitamin E and 500mg of Vitamin C.

Vitamin E will be liquid inside the capsule, while the Vitamin C needs to be crushed
Add a few drops of rosewater before the blending

4. We now usually add about 1 tbsp Rosewater – you can vary according to the desired intensity of the scent. If you can’t find Rosewater in your normal supermarket, try a local Asian, Iranian or Indian shop – you should be able to easily find it. The Rosewater is simply serving the purpose of enhancing the scent, as the pure gel can have a grassy and slightly unpleasant smell. Feel free to try other scents and share your results with the community!

5. Now blend the mix for only a few seconds, to avoid making it to watery. As you can see we have made only a very small quantity, as we prefer to make our Gel fresh every other week. But you can of course make a bit larger quantities, too, just add respectively more Vitamin C, E and Rosewater.

Our home-made pure Aloe Vera Gel is now ready and can be filled into any clean airtight container, preferably glass.

You can now keep your Aloe Vera Gel for about 2 months in the fridge.

Aloe Vera Gel is known for its excellent ability to penetrate the human skin and thus re-hydrate it. It further more has positive effects on acne, can be used to treat sunburn and is even said to regenerate hair follicles. While we haven't tried all of its properties ourselves, we can certainly say that it has a great effect on our skin, makes us look and feel rejuvenated and has helped me against itchy rashes and even mosquito bites. It several time has helped me to get rid of annoying sleep lines in a matter of minutes. Especially in hot summers the cold gel out of the fridge is like putting a relaxing face-mask on!

The main advantage of making the Aloe Vera Gel at home, is that you can be absolutely sure what is in it. Many ready-made products have only a minuscule amount of pure Aloe in it and will most likely not do you much good.