Queen of Hungary’s Facial Toner Recipe
I recently made some homemade Queen of Hungary’s Facial Toner recipe.
I’ve gotta say, growing my own herbs has been a blast this year. I’m in the fourth year at my new homestead, and finally my herbs are HUGE and plentiful. So far, I’ve used my excess herbs to make homemade herbal wreaths and herbs de provence salt.
The next thing I wanted to make with my bajillion of herbs was some type of beauty product. I’ve always wanted to make Queen of Hungary Facial Toner, however, I never had enough of the herbs needed for the recipe. Until this year! Woohoo!
I’ve never been big on beauty stuff or makeup or anything like that. I’m a bit of a tomboy. I like simplicity too much. However, I’m working hard to get better at this whole self-care thing…I am trying to slow down and take care of myself. Things like tea breaks, walks, baths, massages, and taking care of my skin.
Since I’ve never actually used many beauty products in my lifetime, I had to do a lot of research on that. For example, I had no idea what facial toner was. I had to look up the definition. Yep, I was pretty clueless. 😉
After some research, I decided to make things as non-complicated as possible for myself for my facial beauty routine. Like I said above, I like simplicity.
Here’s what I’m doing for my Natural Facial Skincare Regimen:
Step #1: Face Masks –> I only do ONE face mask per week, and I simply use bentonite clay mixed with a bit of raw apple cider vinegar. It’s a nice detoxing mask to pull yuck out of your skin.
Step #2:Facial toner–>Theseare astringents, and they remove excess oils from your skin. They tone your skin and help tighten the pores. I apply it with cotton swabs every night.
Step #3: Face serum –> I either use argan oil or a homemade face serum made with rosehip oil to moisturize my face every night. I’ll try to include my face serum recipe in another post someday.
And that’s it. Mainly just two steps to my natural facial skin routine every night.
About Queen of Hungary’s Facial Toner:
For facial toners, I usually just use raw apple cider vinegar, maybe with a drop of peppermint essential oil in it fora refreshing kick. However, I recently got dried rose petals from one of my favorite herb stores to make homemade rose water, and I was curious how to use the leftovers.
A bit of research led me to a famous formula for the Queen of Hungary’s water. It’s a recipe that’s been around since medieval times, and it is used to keep your skin in youthful good condition. At the store,Queen of Hungary’s Facial Tonersare apparently uber expensive. However, I had all the ingredients on hand, so I figured it would be fun to make a fancier facial toner recipe to spoil my skin. Plus, it seems like a fun gift togive to other people.
I dug around in internet-land for some Queen of Hungary’s Facial Toner recipes, and mixed and matched them a bit. I also had the brilliant idea of using both rose water AND witch hazel in this recipe. All the recipes that I found used one or the other.
This recipe is also based off of the brilliant herbalist Rosemary Gladstar’s recipe from Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health. It’s one of my most-used books, and I highly recommend that every household owns this book for herbal inspiration.
By the way, these herbs looked SO pretty in the jar! Below is a photo of the pretty colors before I poured in the apple cider vinegar. Also, confession: I HATE the smell of apple cider vinegar, however, when this Queen of Hungary’s Facial Toner recipe was finished, it smelled really good. The floral herbs were strong enough to almost completely cover the scent of the vinegar. Yay!
Queen of Hungary’s Facial Toner Recipe
Ingredients:
- 6 parts lemon balm
- 4 parts chamomile
- 2 parts rosemary
- 3 parts calendula
- 5 parts rose petals
- 1 part lemon peel
- 1 part sage
- 3 parts comfrey leaf
- 3 parts lavender flowers
- 1 part mint
- Raw Apple Cider Vinegar (with the mother)
- Rose Water and/or Witch Hazel Extract
Directions:
- Place the herbs in a large glass jar (mason jars work great), fill the jar about 2/3 full of herbs.Pour raw apple cider vinegar into the jar, fill to the top. Cover and gently shake. This will get rid of air bubbles and settle the acv into the cracks. Open and fill to the top with more acv. You might need to repeat this once or twice.
- Put your covered jar in a warm dark place for 2-3 weeks. Shake daily. I believe positive energy/affirmation is important, so try shaking while thinking positive thoughts or singing positive songs. No harm done in adding a bit of positiveness to your day. 🙂
- After 2-3 weeks, strain the herbs. I use both a mesh strainer and cheesecloth. I then squeeze the cheesecloth to get every precious drop of liquid out. For every 1 cup of herbal vinegar, add 1 cup of rose water or witch hazel extract. I used 1/2 cup of rose water and 1/2 cup witch hazel, to get the benefits of both liquids.
- Rebottle into pretty bottles of your choice. This does not need to be in the fridge and it should not expire/go bad.
- Apply to your face daily with a cotton swab.
Notes:
**I used both fresh ingredients from my garden and dried herbs from a reputable source (I buy my dried herbs from Mountain Rose Herbs) in this Queen of Hungary’s Facial Toner recipe. This recipe is written for using fresh ingredients. The normal ratio of dried to fresh herbs is 1:3…this means, if a recipe uses 3 parts fresh herb, it would use 1 part dried herb (because dried herbs are more potent). Honestly, though, I just estimated it all. So what if I added a bit too much dried chamomile? It has zero negative outcomes for my skin, so I’m okay with that. This doesn’t work for every recipe, of course, but for this one, feel free to relax a bit and follow your heart. 😉
**If you don’t feel like making your own rose water, you can buy a good quality one. Here’s a great option for rose water.
More Natural Beauty Recipes:
- Gentle Healing Salve
- How to Make Homemade Lip Balm
- DIY Herbal Hair Rinses
- DIY Cinnamon Vanilla Body Scrub
