Hello hello hello!
This honestly wasn’t requested, but I get a ton of questions on what products I use when I do self tan. So I thought I would do a full blog post on how I do my self tanning routine, and all the products I use and love. I typically can get pretty dark in the summer, and don’t ever self tan during that time especially if I have the opportunity to get a natural tan- and I will surprisingly hang onto my tan for quite awhile.
But once I get into my pale state. OH. EM. GEE. Yuck. I am literally a shade of clear. Sooooo hopefully if you guys ever had any questions this blog post will help answer that! :)
Okayyyy. So the first, and literally the most important part is showering and what you do in the shower. I will shower in the morning on a day that I know I’m not going to be leaving the house or doing anything super important. This is usually around 8am.
In the shower I will do my normal routine with my hair. But (and this is the most important part) I exfoliate and shave like crazy. I exfoliate and shave my legs every time I shower. But on mornings I plan on self tanning, I will use a wash rag instead of a loufa. I feel like a wash rag exfoliates on a deeper level than my loufa. I exfoliate FIRST- then shave, Every. Inch.
Once I get out of the shower I normally immediately lotion up my entire body. It’s very important that you DON’T do that on days youre tanning. I will take a very small amount of body lotion and put that on my elbows, knees and around my ankles, heels, achilles tendon. Spots that I am the most dry.
I will also exfoliate my face (this is something I rarely do. Maybe 1x a week because my skin is too tender to handle anymore. I use a very gentle cleanser with a light exfoliant. I also do moisturizing face mask. While my face mask is on, I start with the tanning process.
So I will use a white towel -because I can bleach (only because I don’t own black towels) or a towel I keep aside to wipe down trojan when he comes inside wet from outside and I will sit down on the ground butt naked haha. In the photos you can see I am using St. Tropez tanning mousse and I will squirt on full squirt allllll the way up my legs. I always always always start from the bottom and immediately do one big swoop upwards and start blending (with my tanning mit) my thigh and then working my way back down to my ankle. I I will put it all over my ankle and the top of my foot. By the time I get to my toes and I will just tap them on the top. I am careful to get all around the top of my foot but not on the actual bottom part of my foot. I also don’t really focus it in between my toes or on my toes.
I will do the exact same thing on my arms. Putting a full squirt from my wrist all the way up to the top of my shoulders and with one big swoop from the bottom up I will start blending. The reason I do this is because I want the least amount of product on my mit when I get to my wrist and hands and feet.
For my hands I will lotion my ENTIRE hand. Front, back, fingers- errthang.
I’ll do a few squirts around my neck and chest and start blending. The key here is to BLEND!!! I also make sure to hit the little bare spots we have behind our ears (mind you my hair is pulled up in a towel during all of this).
Now that my entire body is all sticky haha, my face mask is ready to come off. I make sure not to add any extra lotion onto my face and I will put a 1/4-1/2 pump onto the mit and then tap it around my face- then blend. Duh. I don’t always tan my face- but I hate the way it looks when I don’t wear any makeup and it’s super obvious because my face is stark white and my neck down is tan.
After all of this is done, I will run my hands under water ONLY letting the palms of my hands touching the water (palms face up). This way my fingers and the back of my hand still get dark but my palms don’t look ridiculous and orange. I do feel like I have truly mastered a flawless look with my self tan using this technique because your hands are usually a dead givewaway that you’re not just naturally a tanned glistening goddess.
Now I will put on a shirt I don’t care about. I used to have a super cheap, black and silky robe but have since gotten rid of that so I usually just put on a giant sleep shirt (some of steven’s fire shirts are perfect- so I suggest taking your boyfriends/husbands giant ugly shirt) I will also put on a pair a teensy shorts that are black, or a pair of pj bottoms. The reason you want to put on clothes that you don’t care too much about is because you are going to be sticky and leave behind a goofy dark stain. Now, on the bottle of the tanning mousse, and every brand is different, They usually have directions to leave on anywhere from 2-8 hours but I find that I get the best results if I leave on for a full 24 hours which is why I do this in the morning. If i’m doing this a little more last minute, I will do it at night so I can sleep with it on and rinse off in the morning.
The next morning I will only rinse my body. Usually I put my hair up in my head towel to keep it from getting wet and I will just take my soap bar and very gently run it over my body to make sure my body is clean, but not scrubbed. You will probably see color in the shower so don’t freak out (you definitely will the shorter amount of time you leave the tanning mousse on.) I don’t wash my hair this day just because I end up standing in the shower a lot longer letting water rinse me off even more therefore taking off more of the tan.
I always get the deepest, darkest shade of self tanner. I linked below my favorites! As of right now- my absolute fave is Loving Tan. I do find that the St. Tropez has a yellow almost green undertone so I wouldn’t suggest it to those of you who have a pink or red undertone.
Watch a How-To video here
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