You don’t need to spend a ton of cash on skin elixirs to get glowing. Pure ingredients like avocado, oatmeal, honey and fruit juices actually do a way better job. Skip the synthetics, spare yourself a trip to a department store and save your dough for the fun stuff!

Oatmeal scrub
Oats are rich in vitamin E which reduces scarring, discolouration and roughness. It also gently removes dry, dead cells from the surface of skin. You can simply mix oatmeal with warm water to make a paste and spread on the skin, leaving for a few minutes to dry, then wash off with warm water.

If you really want to treat yourself, mix up this super moisturizing scrub. Gill Deacon, Toronto’s green goddess of DIY beauty, shared this recipe in her book, “There’s Lead in Your Lipstick”.

¼ c. Raw almonds
4 T. Oatmeal
1 T cornstarch
1 T chamomile flowers
2 t lavender essential oil

Chop almonds in a food processor till fine. Add remaining ingredients and blend till mixture is a soft granular powder. To use, mix with a bit of water to make a paste and scrub on skin in a circular motion.

Simple strawberry elixir for oily skin
Strawberries are miracle workers for oily, acne prone skin. Mash some into a pulp and spread directly on clean skin, or mix with a little yogurt, which helps absorb excess oil, kill bacteria, and tighten pores.

Lemon and egg white toning mask
Lemon juice tackles discoloration and acts as a natural disinfectant, while the egg white gives you an instant lift.  Over time, this mask can help make pores less visible. Add a blob of honey if you want to make it moisturizing.

1 egg white
Juice from half a lemon

Beat together egg white and lemon juice for 3 minutes, apply directly to face. Leave on for 30 minutes, rinse with warm water.

Alpha hydroxy acid mask
Fancy, we know. Alpha Hydroxy acids are derived from fruit sugars, which contain a certain acid that helps reduce acne scars and discolouration. You can get the benefits of these chemical compounds without all the synthetic chemicals that go into most commercial creams and masks. Go straight to the source with Gill Deacon’s fruit juice based scrub.

¼ c. Lemon juice
¼ c. Apple juice
¼ c. White grape juice
¼ c. Cane sugar

Shake all ingredients together in a jar, then apply to skin with a cotton pad. Leave on for 10 minutes, then rinse off. This makes a few applications so stash it in the fridge between uses.

Baking soda for blackheads
Banish blackheads by mixing 1 T freshly squeezed OJ with 1 T baking soda to make a thick paste. The baking soda exfoliates and the orange juice helps tighten pores, and the vitamin C brightens. Dampen finger tips and scrub onto face in a circular motion to exfoliate and get the blood flowing. Leave on for 20 minutes, then rinse.

Coffee scrub for circulation
The caffeine in coffee helps stimulate circulation in the skin and actually has the effect of brightening and lifting it. Recycle the grounds from your morning java by mixing a few tablespoons with enough olive oil to make a scrub-like consistency and apply to face and body.