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I burn like the dickens and it’s the absolute worst. But the thing is it doesn’t take a hold right away. I have no idea why but my sunburn waits until I am just sleepy enough to hit the hay and then, out of nowhere, my skin is so HOT! And it hurts to just barely graze the sheets across my newly tomato colored skin.
It can seriously be HOURS before the burn starts to rear its ugly face and every year I forget how it works. We go out to the beach and I’m all, “hey, I’m fine – didn’t burn or anything!” and then later I remember that it doesn’t hit me that quickly. Maybe it is the same way for everyone and maybe it isn’t. Whatever it is it stinks.
My first burn of this year wasn’t as bad as they have been in the past, but it was still pretty stinking awful. I was reading in bed and I kept asking Rob to turn the air down as I was hot, hot, hot! And out of nowhere I go to switch sides and BOOM! Ouch! The horror! The pain! Perhaps that is slightly dramatic :)
I have lots and lots of essential oils and beauty making whatnots so I was able to whip this stuff up on the fly. It’s definitely one of the best things about making your own stuff is that when you’ve got kind of an awkward or awful situation and you don’t want to go to the grocery store to buy something ready made you can whip something up at home.
It was like that with my late night sunburn. I started using straight aloe but I was still having trouble getting to sleep. I figured I might as well fire up the camera and get a tutorial out of the whole thing!
For this project you will need:
- Aloe vera (alcohol free)
- Vitamin E Oil
- Lavender essential oil
- Peppermint essential oil
I used lavender in my sunburn care because it’s soothing and it helps me sleep and vitamin E oil helps keep skin hydrated.
Peppermint is cooling which feels really good on a hot burn.
Now I read something a while back ago that makes me paranoid of using metal around essential oils. I can’t tell you why it is but I just remember a general feeling of not doing that.
Mix together 1/2-1 ounce of vitamin E oil, 1/3 cup of aloe, approximately 30 drops of lavender and 10-30 drops of peppermint (depending on how cooling you want, note at a certain point it does become irritating!)
The end result is clear and soothing and wonderful. The lavender helped me fall right to sleep and the peppermint cooled my skin just enough to make me comfortable. Aah!
I hope you don’t get a nasty sunburn, but if you do, I hope this helps you out!