Tea and Me Blog

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I like to experiment with tea. Besides drinking it, playing with different uses of tea is becoming a favorite past-time of mine. I had heard before of putting ice-cubes on your face to shrink pores and other skin care benefits, but thinking back on one of my previous articles, The Tea about Drinking Tea, I realized you could combine tea and ice cubes to maximize benefits. After doing a little research, I realize that I am not the first one to think this and that it is actually a popular practice among some people. I decided to test out this experiment by making my own tea-infused facial cubes and seeing what happens!

Different teas provide different properties and results when in ice form. Here are the benefits of putting these teas into ice cubes!

• Green Tea – antioxidant and disinfects
• Black Tea – disinfects
• White Tea – antioxidant and soothing
• Peppermint Tea – reduces redness and soothes inflammation
• Lavender Tea – soothes irritated skin and disinfects
• Chamomile Tea – Soothes red, inflamed, and irritated skin

After choosing your tea, you want to bring water to a boil and brew the tea so it is quite potent. Steep the tea either overnight or until the tea is cooled. After the tea is cooled, pour the tea into ice cube trays and put in the freezer for 2 hours or until totally frozen. There are a few steps you should take before using the cubes. Try and open up your pores by taking a shower, bath, steam facial, or warm up a wet towel and put on your face for 10 minutes. Then take your normal face wash and do a quick wash on your face to remove any dirt from your pores. Then take an ice cube (either with gloves on or using a paper towel) and gently guide the cube over your face, focusing on problem areas. It is best to do this at night, allowing your face to fully benefit from the tea facial while you sleep.

My Experience:

I used loose-leaf organic tea that had both peppermint and chamomile ingredients. I really want to sooth my skin and reduce redness. Instead of just steeping the tea with a steeper, I allowed the leaves to float while infusing. After letting it cool, I poured the mixture, leaves and all (which I would later regret), into the rather large ice tray(also regret). It went into the freezer and sat there for the rest of the day til I tried them out.

I wrapped the cube I was using in a paper towel so I wouldn’t freeze my hands. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for the cold feeling of that ice hitting my face. Many things went askew. Instantly the ice started melting and got all over me. The leaves streaked across my face. One plus was whenever I put the ice over my lips, I got a great refresher on how good that tea is. Besides that, it was frigid and wet and did I mention it was cold? Since I used too big of ice trays, I had a huge chunk of tea/ice. Some people in my research stated that they use the whole ice cube and that’s when they know they are done. If I had tried to use that entire cube, I still would be freezing my face (30 minutes later). I threw out the remaining cube, rinsed my face in cold water to get off the leaves and sticky feeling, and patted my cold face dry. I cannot tell if my pores have become smaller but my face is very very soft.

I urge you to try this experiment and then tell me how it goes in the comments. Maybe somehow I did it wrong, let me know! Anyways, I did learn a few tricks and tips to it if you want to experience a frozen face yourself.

• Try and use small ice cube trays, I used rather big ones and I could only use a very small amount of the ice cube. If you do not have small ice trays, you can buy one here.
• Use a steeper. If you leave the leaves in the tea, you will just get them all over your face later.
• Use at night when you do not have to be afraid of how your skin will react to the cold and different teas.

I do not know if I will freeze my face for tea science again, only doing it again if I found out I did it completely wrong. But as always it is a new adventure and I always learn something new! Hope you did as well! Happy brewing (and freezing)!

-Danielle