This lovely green tea and cucumber DIY eye gel can take the place of your toner in the evening. I talked about gels, as well as how to go about formulated them, in my recent on how to make a DIY toner post.
While you still might want to use your normal toner on the rest of your face, skip your under-eye area and use this instead, especially if you need help for bags under eyes!
Gels are better than toners for tightening up the skin under your eye. They can also, depending on the ingredients you use, offer some powerful soothing, softening and anti-aging properties to keep your eyes feeling young and fresh for longer.
Soothing And Softening
The cucumber hydrosol in this recipe will leave your eyes feeling so much fresher. Cucumber is well known for its power to soothe the eyes, and after a long day at work or spent running after your little ones, it’s just the ingredient to get those eyes feeling human again.
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Protective And Anti-Aging
But what about skin aging? The eyes are one of the first areas of the face to start showing the visible signs of aging. The green tea extract in this gel has some powerful anti-aging properties to help with this.
Green tea is absolutely packed with antioxidants and anti free radicals. These oxidants and free radicals are thought to be the main contributors to skin aging. By applying this gel to your eyes on a daily basis, you’ll help to keep these in check and minimize fine lines and wrinkles that like to show up in the corners of our eyes.
Skin Tightening
As I’ve already said, gels are great for tightening the skin around the eyes. Eye bags are the telltale symptoms of not enough sleep. But if you’re a mom or just don’t sleep well in general, it can be hard to make sure we get a full 8 hours of sleep at night.
This gel can compensate a bit, but I wouldn’t say it will replace a full night’s sleep. Nevertheless, by using this daily, you can reduce the visibility of those bags under the eye.
And If you’re the kind of person who usually finds they get enough sleep, but occasionally have to pull an all-nighter, this gel will absolutely make your eyes look and feel as though you’ve slept normally. A great product for the grade conscious student or the young professional with a seemingly endless to-do list!
Great As Part Of Your Night-Time Skincare Regime
While I would say you absolutely can use this cucumber eye gel at any time and as many times as you want, I do recommend it as part of your normal nightly skincare regime. This is because I’ve sometimes found it to be a little sticky.
So, If you wear any amount of eye makeup, this gel could be a little problematic for you. But if you use it at night before bed, you won’t have to worry about it.
If you wanted to use this in the morning, you absolutely can. I would just give it 20 minutes before applying makeup. Maybe it could be the first thing you apply after you’ve showered? Then, after your breakfast, you could go about moisturizer and makeup as normal.
So let’s take a look at the different ingredients we’ll need for this DIY under eye gel.
Ingredients For The Eye Gel
- 12.38g Cucumber Hydrosol
- 0.75g Green Tea Extract
- 1.5g Glycerine
- 0.23g Xanthan Gum
- 0.15g Preservative
This should give you a batch size of 15g, which should be enough for an under-eye gel, although you could happily double it to 30g.
Notes
Hydrosol
The cucumber hydrosol is very soothing for the skin. Have you ever had a face mask and the cosmetologist at the spa put some cucumber over your eyes? Well, adding this ingredient is similar to doing just that, except it’s waaaay better.
This hydrosol should help clear up day to day eye irritation. It also helps to soften the skin. But if the cucumber isn’t really your thing, chamomile would do a good job in its stead. Its shares many of the qualities of cucumber, especially helping to soothe irritation.
Botanical Extract
The number 1 use of Green Tea extract is in some form of eye gel because it’s really good for this area. Green tea is a natural protective stimulant, helping to keep the skin under your eye firm and strong.
Its also a great antioxidant, so it should help keep the under-eye free from congestion, but also fight off the common signs of aging we see around the eyes. However, there are a variety of glycerite extracts for you to try.
You could double up on the cucumber and use a cucumber glycerite to compliment your hydrosol. I recommend doing your research and seeing what different extract interest you for your own, unique skin.
Functional Ingredients
A little note on our two most important functional ingredients, the Xanthan gum, and the preservative. These two are essential, and I’ll tell you why. The xanthan gum is the gelling agent. Without it, we wouldn’t have a gel, we’d have some runny water. While you could use a different cosmetic gum, xanthan is the only one I’ve tried and it works great.
The preservative is an important additive as well. We want our product to be free of microbial growth whilst also having a great shelf life. The preservative ensures both of these. I have, in the past, recommended not using a preservative around the eye, but providing you’re using a more natural preservative system, such as Preservative Echo, we can get away with it.
Without a gelling agent and preservative, this product would neither be a gel nor safe to put under the eye. Best not to play around with these two ingredients too much.
Lack Of Essential Oils
You will notice that this eye gel recipe doesn’t call for any essential oils. This is because the majority of the ingredients in this recipe are water soluble. While you could probably disperse essential oil into the hydrosol and extract with a solubilizer, prior to adding the gelling agent, I didn’t want to overcomplicate this recipe. I will be exploring this in the future, however.
How To Make Cucumber Eye Gel
Step 1: In a glass beaker, mix together the cucumber hydrosol and the green tea extract. You can use a jewelry scale, and reset it using the T button each time you add an ingredient.
This is a great way to save on equipment whilst also being accurate.
Step 2: In a different beaker (a small glass vessel will do) mix together your glycerine and xanthan gum. Mix it thoroughly until it is a thick gel. This process is preparing the gelling agent.
By doing this, rather than dumping the gum into the beaker of hydrosol and extract, we ensure that the gel remains smooth and does not become lumpy.
Step 3: Go ahead and add the xanthan/glycerine to the cucumber hydrosol and green tea extract. Once added, stir thoroughly so that the gelling agent has fully dispersed.
I like to add a little at a time, stir thoroughly and then add a bit more. This just makes the mixing a little easier, and you’ll be less likely to spill.
Step 4: As you stir, you will notice that everything becomes much, much thicker. This is as anticipated, so don’t worry. You may notice little white lumps in the gel. If you do, just continue to stir. Eventually, these lumps will disperse into the gel.
Step 5: Once the texture of your gel is consistent, go ahead and add your preservative. Mix in thoroughly.
Step 6: Once fully combined, you can transfer the cucumber eye gel to your chosen container. I like to use a very small pot made from glass. You can get them as small as 15-30g, and are ideal for this purpose.
Your green tea and cucumber eye gel should last about 6 months with a preservative, but with small batch sizes and daily use you’ll use it all up long before you need to worry about this.
