Georgian Essentials Face Powder

Dear Ladies,

In our favourite era, just as today, ladies were very concerned for their complexion. Lady Elizabeth and Lady Caroline would have the luxury of purchasing the latest products to keep their skin looking fresh, but those who were not so fortunate made their own facial products.

In this swap, we will focus on face powder, a very necessary item in a ladies toilette. Face powder, smoothed and lent a much desired lustrous look for a lady, evening the skin tone and downplaying any imperfections. Face powder is not so very complicated to create and many women did have their own special receipts for this most essential item.

To make face powder, first we must create the base, which was often potato starch or arrowroot powder with sweet scents added, we will be using potato starch for this swap. Here is a video that will help you to extract the starch from potatoes to begin the process of making your own face powder. VIDEO In this video the man uses a blender to make the starch into powder, but you can use a fork to break it down also, it is quite brittle when dried.

Once you have your “powder” you may add ingredients to make the powder fragrant, or indeed, if you do not favour the porcelain look, spices such as nutmeg and cinnamon may be added to give the powder a colour more in tune with your natural skin tone, the unique scents of the spices will add a pleasant scent to your powder.

Once you have created your powder, share a photo or two with your partner and a little note in your character’s voice telling her how you attained your own special blend.

We will have one partner for this swap and we will follow the video to create a potato starch, to which scents, herbs, flowers or spices are added to produce your finished product. Email a photo/s and share your recipe if you like, discussing how you scented or coloured your powder.

Questions are always welcome, we hare happy to help in any way we can.