DIY “pore strips” mask? Are you kidding? (Wow, no, it works!)

Some DIY blog post suggestions are just too bizarre to be believed; others are too bizarrely easy to verify/bust to be ignored. (One of those was Crunchy Betty’s Mocha Frappucino Face Mask…and boy, am I glad I tried that one!)

This one falls into that category: How to make your own pore strips, from Petit Elefant.

Click on over for directions, but it basically involves an envelope of Knox gelatin, a tablespoon or two of milk, and about 15 seconds. Plus smearing and drying time. You look kind of creepy and weird–like something from a zombie apocalypse movie or the Thriller video–while it’s drying, but your face feels oh so lovely when you’re done.

Yes, I tried it–I happened to have a box of gelatin in the back of the pantry which I’d always planned to use to make nice real-fruit-juice Jello for my kids one day but forgotten about. And of course the milk was no problem.

So, my take on the whole thing: Those Biore strips kind of stunk, and they never got out half of what they promised to from my mid-twenties giant-pore blackhead-ridden face. I’ve taken better care of my skin since then and my pores aren’t as icky as they were, but I still get the odd zit and still have way-too-big pores that get gunky. This mask went further toward clearing and smoothing everything out than anything else I’ve ever tried.  Highly recommended. And crazy-easy, and crazy-cheap.

The only cautions I’d offer: be careful with the skin around the edges, where the stuff dries much harder and more quickly than the inner areas where you probably have it on a little thicker; this can really hurt to peel off. I also found that it wasn’t necessary to have the stuff totally bone-dry before peeling it; just a teeny bit soft still seemed to do the trick and come off in a nice clean sheet. And hurt less.  The good news is that, since it’s gelatin, if anything’s too hard you can just wet it with warm water and it softens right up, so there’s no risk of unwanted pain.

Second, and I didn’t directly test this one and have no intention to: when I put it on, I inadvertently got a good bit into my eyebrows. I had this sudden terror that peeling there might take my eyebrows off. So I didn’t try, I used the warm water trick. Erm…if anyone does try this, let me know how it goes, mmmkay? (No, don’t try this!)

So: cheap, easy, effective, no scary chemicals. Totally what I look for in a body care product. Let me know if you try it, and how it works!