5 Skin Actives that are Taking My Skin to the Next Level

After sharing an image on my Instagram story of my favorite new skincare accessory, I received messages asking to share details on which actives I've experimented with.  The list is currently a work in progress but so far, I'm happy with the results thus far.

I'm going to continue to experiment with various raw ingredients but these are the one's that are currently in rotation.


Green Powder
My very first stint into to the world of mixing a single ingredient into beauty products began when I played around with adding green superpower into my moisturizer.  The idea seemed crazy at first but it actually made a difference to my skin.  It appeared healthier overall thanks to the topical application of chlorella.  I loved how easy it was to enhance my daily moisturizer simply by sprinkling in a little green powder into the mix.  From that point on, I knew I had to continue to explore this technique.

Vitamin C
One day,  I jumped on an Instagram live video where a pseudo-celebrity generously shared her beauty routine.  After going down the list of her daily faves, she finally revealed her holy grail product.  This product, according to her, was solely responsible for her great looking skin.  After taking note of the name, I quickly fled to Google for more details.  Turns out that this product was quite pricey.  But once I got to the ingredient list, I realized that it was a single ingredient product.  That one ingredient was vitamin C. More specifically, ascorbic acid.

So I hopped on over to Amazon and found powdered vitamin C at a fraction of the price.  The rest is history.   I've played around with making my own vitamin C products in the past but I always had to deal with the possibility of oxidation due to the short shelf life.  The last thing we want to do is apply oxidized vitamin C to the skin.  Since my vitamin C is now in powder form, no longer have to worry about preserving my formulas. I just add a tiny bit to my favorite serum or moisturizer and suddenly I have a concentrated vitamin C product at my fingertips.

Activated Charcoal
Next on my list of favorite products that I whip up thanks to the help of the tiny spatula is activated charcoal.  I've spoken at length about the deep cleansing/purifying properties of activated charcoal.  Last year, I took my cleansing routine to the next level by sprinkling in a small amount of activated charcoal to my facial wash.  I definitely noticed a difference from incorporating this simple step.  My skin is very active during the warm summer months which means that I need to bring activated charcoal cleansing back.

Physical Exfoliators
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that my skin texture was a bit rough.  After realizing that it was a while since I exfoliated properly, I immediately sprang into action.  I happened to have some raw exfoliation beads lying around and decided to scoop in a tiny pinch into my moisturizing cleanser.  Minutes later, I was left with soft glowing skin.  I keep a few spatulas in the bathroom for mixing in dry products, like charcoal and exfoliation beads into my cleanser. Prior to that, I would try to pour a little powder straight from the package to my hand and it would get all over the place. Now the process is much neater and I can control the exact amount of product I add.

Retin A
Although I haven't tried adding Retin A into my moisturizer yet, I'm really excited to try this out.  Whenever I got into the habit of using Retin A, I had to back off due to excessive peeling.  For people can't handle the pure form of vitamin A, there's the milder, over the counter version (retinol).  But instead of spending hard earned cash for a new product, I'm planning on adding a little Retin A with my night time moisturizer to create the best of both worlds.  I'm hoping that by diluting it with my creams, my skin can get more acclimated.

I'm beyond happy with how I've been able to enhance my skin products. Just one simple accessory has helped make such a difference while reducing the cost of my skin routine.