Homemade Self-Tanner

0 Posted by - August 31, 2012 - Hair & Beauty

This pin test was originally posted on CraftFail.

I know it’s August, but it’s hard to get tan when you wear SPF 80 if you step outside even for a minute for fear of burning like a boiled lobster. We of Scandinavian descent can’t have it any other way. It’s pale as a ghost, or burned all to hell. Luckily, Pinterest has a solution for us:

It’s a self-tanner using black tea. Should work, right? I mean, it stains your teeth, so why not your legs?

I steeped myself some tea and set out to test it.

And then I tried to take a Before picture like 80 bajillion times because I couldn’t find an angle that didn’t make my legs look fat. (Turns out it wasn’t the angle’s fault. Hrm.)

I opted for the sponge method rather than the spray bottle method, mostly because I don’t trust my aim with a spray bottle and I didn’t want my walls to have a fake tan, too.

I got the bright idea to only do one leg so that the before and after picture would be irrelevant: you could just look at the tan leg and the white leg. So after I used the whole 2 cups of tea on one leg, my legs looked like this:

Can you tell which one I tanned? Yeah, me either, although when I asked my husband when he got home, he pointed to the right one, which was correct. I guess he had a 50/50 chance. So yeah, my right leg should be slightly less pale than my left leg. You be the judge.

Also, my tub looked like this when I was finished:

It definitely got tanner than my legs did.

Sooo, if you’re looking for a self-tanner solution, you should probably just go buy some. I would much rather have had this tea to drink than sponge it all over one leg for a tan you can’t really tell is there.

  • Dogma

    I tried this once…. many moons ago when I was an insecure highschool girl. Except I thought I could Steep the bags in the tub and just sit in the tea…… The end was not pretty, and I owed my mom a new box of tea.

  • http://donotletthisuniverseforgetyou.blogspot.com/ Heather Liz

    I could tell it was the right one before you told us. It semi worked, but yes, I’d rather drink the tea

  • HeatherBunchWilliams

    I said right leg too! Doesn’t Pyrex explode if you heat it on the stove!?! Be careful!

    • Pintester

      HeatherBunchWilliams Oh my goodness, please no one heat a thing of glass on the stove. That burner was totally off and I just set it there to steep after I poured in the boiling water. I need to make people sign a waiver before they read stuff here. :)

    • http://blog.robbiefoust.com/ rfoust

      HeatherBunchWilliams interesting, i didnt know that about pyrex.  i thought it wasnt supposed to explode, but i guess i was wrong. :) (snopes.com confirms it)

  • GirlInCrowd

    Your toenails look good.

  • magemum

    our bathtub is a mustard yellow colour so “tanning” it wouldn’t show up very well.  =)

  • Cilla

    Lol your legs look super skinny!

  • lightbulbsms

    I tried this one and it worked until I took a shower, but I smelled like tea until I took a shower. I used a spray bottle to apply. I would spay my legs then use a hairdryer to dry the tea spray faster. I did 3 coats and it looked okay where it didn’t run.

  • ellabobs

    You looked tanned to begin with. You said you were ghostly pale, so at first I thought those were your after pics. I cant tell the difference between the left and right leg but I would say they both looked tanned to begin with. On someone with genuinely white legs, it might work. You could try coffee instead. But your legs are a nice colour already.

  • christy

    I actually tried this one and it really does work. Maybe mine worked because I sprayed it on and then patted it with a sponge to catch drips! I also let the tea bags soak longer than directed!

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