Some people might use milk for quenching thirst and gelatine for setting home baked goods, but dammit, that's just totally unimaginative. YouTube favourite Michelle Phan has an alternative idea for these ingredients: she suggests using them to make a cupboard version of peel-off pore strips that have all the gunk-removing benefits of their store-bought cousins without the cost.
On a roll with peel-off face yokies, I decided to give Michelle's recipe a whirl over the weekend. Per her instructions, I mixed together a tablespoon of milk and a tablespoon of powdered gelatine in a microwaveable dish and zapped the resulting concoction for 10 seconds. After allowing it to cool down slightly, I used my fingers to spread a thin, even layer onto my nose and chin and then waited the recommended 10 minutes for the odourless jellified mixture to set before peeling it off.
Removal, though simple, was felt very hard on my skin: there was much wincing and gritting of teeth and watering of eyes because it felt like a layer of skin (not just dead cells!) and every hair on my face was coming away with the strip. Owie. Usually, the best bit about using pore strips is examining them post removal to see what's been pulled from your pores, but there was no evidence that anything - other than short downy hairs - had been cleared out of mine with these DIY jobbies.
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My verdict? Painful and completely useless, Make And Do pore stripes are a definite DIY fail. Save your milk for adding to your tae or dipping cookies in, and your gelatine for vodka and cranberry juice jelly. Or, y'know, whatever baking stuff it would more usually be used for ...
