Self-tanning do-it-yourself: we tried and that's what happened

Self-tanners can be a great way to plump up your skin in the summer without actually exposing your skin to the harmful—read: destructive—ultraviolet rays of the sun. And, as a person who is very attentive to the sun - and who has very fair skin -I love the idea of ​​sporty artificial light both in the warm season and when my winter skin needs a little care. Combined with my love for DIY beauty and skincare products, I turned our Skincare.com office into my very own tanning salon using ingredients I brought from my kitchen and my favorite light lotion for the summer. . Kiehl's Creme de Corps lightweight body lotion. Now, before I feed your hopes: this particular DIY project didn't go according to plan - some, myself included, might even call it a DIY failure. However, it does have a happy ending, so keep reading! 

To make the lotion, I mixed ½ cup of Kiehl's Creme De Corps Light-Weight Body Lotion with 2 tablespoons of pure cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon of coconut oil and blended them together until a dark, creamy self-tanner formed. . Then I prepared the skin for application, as I would before using any self-tanner, and then apply the DIY mixture in small, circular motions to the skin.

Initially, I thought it could be one of two ways: Self-tanner would either work great and give me a natural sun-kissed hue, or leave spots on my skin that would be impossible to remove. Neither of these ended up happening. In fact, aside from my skin getting super soft from the mixture of Creme de Corps Light-Weight Body Lotion and coconut oil… nothing happened. Desperate to get it to work, I tried Plan B and applied it to my skin as a mask, then wiped off the excess after ten minutes, hoping it would leave some sort of stain on my skin. When that didn't work, I was ready to give up. Until our editor-in-chief came up with a brilliant idea: 

We've just received a batch of Honey Bronze products from The Body Shop and included limited edition Honey Bronze Drops of Sun stamps. Specially made for adjust the shade of your foundationDrops of Sun is a concentrated self-tanning serum that gives you the freedom to fully customize your bronzer shade for an artificial summer glow that can be washed off with makeup at the end of the day. Packed with antioxidant-rich vitamin E and community branded honey, this self-tanning serum helps hydrate skin and neutralize environmental stressors. I decided to try adding about six drops of the serum to a quarter of Kiehl's Creme de Corps Light Body Lotion to see if we could get the same effect I was hoping for. It turns out that's exactly what happened! I was able to get the sunless tan I was hoping for—one that my original DIY recipe just couldn't give—and at the same time create my own shade. Check out my results for the homemade bronzer and Drops of Sun serum below.

The Body Shop Honey Bronze Drops of Sun, $ 20

My left hand after applying the self tanning recipe:

My left hand after using The Body Shop's Honey Bronze Drops of Sun with Kiehl's Creme de Corps Light Body Lotion:

Lesson learned: Some DIY products just aren't as effective as the real thing!