How To Make A Really Soothing Natural Eye Mask

“When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.” ~ Victor Hugo

Over the summer I stopped taking mirtazapine. Around Christmas time when I started being unwell again my GP prescribed me a new antidepressant called duloxetine because she said it wouldn’t make as sleepy all the time as the mirtazapine. While it didn’t make me drowsy it also didn’t make me any better, so last week I switched back to taking mirtazapine.

One thing the duloxetine did do was make me really dehydrated, when I started taking my skin and my eyes really dried out. Since I’ve switched back on to the mirtazapine this has only got worse. On top of which I’ve spent most of my waking hours over the last weeks staring at either the TV screen or my iPad trying to distract myself from being crazy and/or depressed. This has combined over the last few days to make my eyes really, really sore.

I’m out of eye cream – I usually use Simple’s Kind to Eyes Soothing Balm – and I’m not well enough to venture into town to buy some more. Besides, my actual eye balls were hurting as much as anything and I’m not sure what a cream you put around your eyes could really do for that. Then I remembered how a girl I lived with at university used to make her own eye mask out of cucumber and potato. I didn’t think it could be good as a proper cream but figured it was worth a go. Like I said my eyes really hurt.

So I made myself a potato and cucumber eye mask last night – It’s really easy since a potato and an equal amount of cucumber are literally all you need; well besides a grater, a bowl and something to apply it with – and tried it over night. I was really impressed with how well it worked. I woke up today and my eyes were fine. I would never have thought something so simple could work quite so well. I still have loads left as well. One potato and a quarter of a cucumber made at least as much balm as you’d get if you bought one from the shop, only I think the Simple cream I buy normally cost me about £4 whereas the ingredients I used in this will have cost me about 30p.

Apparently it works because potatoes are both cooling and astringent, and the cucumber, which is eponymously cool, contains ascorbic and caffeic acid. Cooling is obviously nice when something is sore, and the astringent and acids help to reduce soreness and any puffiness it might have caused.

The mask supposedly works as a beauty eye mask as well if used regularly. Cucumber contains a natural skin lightening agent, which is could for dark circles and the potato will help to shrink any bags under the eyes.

Here’s how to make it:

What you’ll need –

• A reasonably large potato
• A similar sized piece of cucumber
• One grater
• One sieve
• Two bowls
• Two cotton wool eye pads

What you have to do –

Step 1. Peel the potato and grate it into a bowl.

 Step 2. Grate the cucumber into a bowl along with the potato.

Step 3. Strain all the juice out of the grated pulp and into another bowl. My old housemate used to use a piece of cloth for this, I figured a sieve would do just as well.

Step 4. Once you have your eye mask you can dab your cotton pads into the juice, or put some drops of the mask on to the pads depending on how much you want to use, and put them on your eyes. You don’t need to go to sleep with it like I did – I only tried that because I was feeling a bit desperate – ten or fifteen minutes would probably do the trick.

(My apologies for the quality of the photographs. My camera has randomly decided that it’s no longer going to turn on anymore, which is actually really annoying because I’ve not had it much more than a year, and so I took them on my iPad. Only I’ve never done that before so I have no idea if it has settings or if it does how to adjust them to take a decent pictures.)