Every year they, the fashionistas, say that pale is interesting – well up here in the windswept north of England where the sun don’t shine, pallid is the norm and we hate it.
So refusing to bow to the indignities of our location we paint our selves with bisto and draw lines on our legs with eyeliner – no sorry that was the war. We stain ourselves brown with self tanning lotion.
But that comes in a plastic bottle and you know what I think about plastic bottles, so I make my own.
Home made self tan
Add self tanning additive DHA to a base cream.
As taken from the aromantics website – they are the guys I buy my DHA from
A Self-Tanning Agent, DHA is a natural substance derived from the bioconversion of glycerol extracted from Palm or Rapeseed Oil. DHA is also present in the human body. As a consequence, the risk of an allergic response is very low. The result of using DHA is a natural looking brown or golden hue to the skin, without exposure to the sun. The induced tan provides photo-protection against UVA radiation. To use, dissolve in a little cold water and then add while the product is under 40°C. Add 5-8% to Self-Tanning Preparations and 0.5%-3% to Sun Screens. The raw material needs to be kept dry, away from light and in the fridge. NB pH needs to be under 5.5. Test your product with Litmus Paper and either add Lactic acid, Citric acid or Ascorbic acid to reduce the pH, if necessary.
It works – though you might want to play around with the percentages – the first batch I made was rather strong for my white, white skin.
I have added this to my own home made lotion but I see no reason why you couldn’t add it to a bought lotion. However making your own is really easy – for more details click here.
You can also add it to your home-made suntan lotion to get a golden glow while NOT burning.
NB the DHA comes in a small plastic tub. You can make loads of the stuff from one tub. So while the base ingredients come packaged in plastic this represents a massive reduction in plastic consumption as one small tub replaces a number of bottles.
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