Cucumber, Witch Hazel and Rosewater Eye Mask

I’ve not written a post for a few days, quite honestly this is because there have been a few late nights, combined with the summer heat, contact lenses and staring at a computer screen, my eyes feel sore. I mean really sore, the kind that feels as if you have sharp sandpaper in your eyes and are on fire.

By the time I got home last night, I needed something to help soothe my eyes. I’ve used cucumber slices before and they do help, but I needed something that would be potent and act quickly to relieve the sore tight feeling in my eyes.

I thought about this on the commute all the way home and I decided the best way to get results would be to mash up cucumber slices so that all the juice from both the flesh and the skin could be used.

I had recently purchased a bottle of Witch Hazel to try and make a Rosewater and Witch Hazel toner that was featured in Janis Natural’s blog. She’s got some great tips about natural beauty.

This was a good combination I thought. Witch Hazel is a natural astringent and is good for helping to soothe bruised skin. (It lists this as one of it’s many uses for Witch Hazel on the bottle I bought) Cucumber has lots of health benefits that is widely known and written about.

So here’s what I made:

Cut 4 thin slices of cucumber and chopped them up thinly. In a pestle and mortar, I mashed the cucumber up as much as I could.

Sliced Cucumber

Into the mortar a poured some Witch Hazel and added some Rosewater.

I combined this with the cucumber and let it sit until the cucumber, witch hazel and rosewater had infused and mixed with one another. I poured this mix into a small bowl over a small sieve so that all the solid bits of cucumber were removed. The remaining liquid was a lovely cool green colour and had a lovely cucumber scent.

Sieved Cucumber, Witch Hazel and Rosewater

Using a couple of cotton wool pads I dipped them into the mix and squeezed out the liquid so it would not drip into my eyes.

I put these pads over my eyes once I’d removed my make-up and contact lenses and let them do their work for about 10 minutes – basically, I was so tired yesterday, I fell asleep in my daughter’s bedroom with the pads on my eyes as they were so lovely and cool.

When I awoke, my sore eyes felt much, much better.

There’s enough mix for a couple of days. Which is about right as I don’t think it can keep any longer than this, as it’s the freshness of the cucumber that I think makes it so powerful at combating sore and puffy eyes.

Do let me know, if you have a remedy for tired sore eyes, I’d love to find out about other ways to help de-puff sore eyes.

(BTW apologies for the slightly blurry, wonky photo in this post – I didn’t have my glasses or contact lenses in, which means I was as blind as a bat, when I took the picture.)