Thank goodness for Hairtell, I really appreciate this thread on Tendskin. Andrea recommended it so I just picked up a bottle at my haircutter today. She speaks with an asian accent so when she went to ring up the price it pretty much sounded like she said '$16.00' for the big bottle. I handed her a twenty and she looked at me and said "$60! $60!" I was appalled at this price. I just got the little four ounce bottle for $15.00 which just smells and works like what you guys say, alcohol, water and aspirin. The Propylene Glycol and Glycerin I think are just stabilizers for the weak acid family that aspirin is. As for the Cyclomethicone, that's a silicone oil used in a whole bunch of things from makeup to deoderant to create a silky feeling. It's an inert ingrediant that has nothing to do with getting rid of bumps or redness. It could probably added in to a homemade mix by adding a dab of some skin moisterizer that contains a bunch of it, but if you're going to put lotion on afterwords, it's completely unnecessary. I just bought this bottle to read the ingredients and get a good sense of what it's effect is. After this, I'll be making my own, and yes, it works and making your own is recommended highly.

Thanks all!

Mantaray

Yeah, with Saltie, I'd like to know how much aspirin to use. I want it kind of strong, 4 aspirins per one cup alcohol + one cup water? Deionized water perhaps? maybe ten aspirin? Has anybody tried putting on Tendskin *before* epilating? As a pain reducer? Thanks.

Mantaray

Okay, after doing some looking up and dusting off my old Chemistry minor, I came up with a self-tried brew here that can act a lot like tend skin. Note, these guys watch their patent closely, and I don't offer this advice so that people can bottle this and sell it, that would be wrong. But so that those that can't afford the real deal, can at least enjoy some smooth skin. After all, these are readily available ingredients, so you do have a right to mix this up at home for your own use. And also, the Tend Skin people wouldn't have to deal with people trying to make a version themselves if they just charged a more reasonable price for it. $16.00 for a 4 oz. bottle isn't a good marketing strategy even here in San Diego where everything costs an arm and a leg. They are based in Florida where wages are depressed, I wonder about the price there. Well, enough of my bandstanding.

What you should know:

Aspirin, the active chemical itself, not the whole tablet, is soluble and stable in alcohol. The more alcohol, the longer the shelf life, of a home brew, I'm guessing weeks? I want to experiment with this later.

Aspirin is unstable in water, and will form acetic acid as a buy product, vinegar. The more water you have in your solution, the more vinegar-y it will start smelling as time goes buy. Aspirin will decay by 20% in about four days in water, but this is a fact I'm not really clear on.

Any water in your solution is only easing the sensation of the alcohol for you, but makes the solution less potent, more like vinegar and easier to detiorate. Water listed in commercial mixes are only due to the fact that they are using 90% or 70% alcohol and the balance of these percentages are made up with water. The other ingerdients listed are more for consistancy, texture/feel as you smoothe it on, and longer term shelf life (years)


Generic Walmart aspirin, which I use, contain about 325 milligrams of aspirin. The rest of the tablet is calcium phosphates, starches, and talcs. These are to just bulk up the pill, to aid against air moisture, and to buffer as the pill sits in the high acid environment of your stomach.

If you want to make a purely water solution and leave out alcohol altogether (you can, and it'll work so so), remember that aspirin is only soluble in water to the extent of about three of these tablets per 100 millilitres, so in a pint of water, anything more than about 15 tablets is going to be useless waste. But as you add more alcohol, the solution will be able to hold more aspirin in solution. In mixing up water containing solutions, you will notice more heat and pressure being created, remember to vent upon shaking! this is the aspirin already starting to degrade into acetic acid, this is the heat given off from bonds of the aspirin chemical being broken apart (hydrolysis).

Okay, here's what I do:

Take twenty generic aspirins, crush them up well, into fine dust in a dry vessel or on paper. Take an empty one-pint alchol bottle, make sure it's completely dry on the inside, fill it halfway with 70% rubbing alcohol. Add the aspirin. Shake well for at least four minutes. Notice with pure alcohol you don't get the heat, because of no hydrolysis, that's a good thing. After shaking, let the solution sit still while you do your epilating, waxing, or whatever. After all the chalks, talcs and calcium phosphates have settled to the bottom in a white dust, carefully "decant", that is, pour off without disturbing the sediment on the bottom of the bottle the clear alcohol layer into another dry bottle. Viola, there's your solution. It works fabulous and you can pour it in a squirt-type bottle just for ease of dispensing. Of course I'd use gloves when applying it and I'd use lotion right after it dries, and don't use anymore than you would a commercial, off the shelf mix, remember aspirin *is* an biologically active ingredient, you don't want to over do it. If you get chalk on your skin, then you didn't seperate out all the sediment chalk carefully enough. Try again.

I'm going to start experimenting with adding a little witch hazel and dispensing it into a spray bottle for ease of application. But that's me. Good luck, and make sure you don't have any allergies to aspirin or alcohol before trying this.

Mantaray

mantaray:

Interesting, do keep us informed

I'm not sure of the exact amount that your using.

So your used 300 grams of aspirn in about a .25 L bottle but how many mls of alcohol and how many mls of water in the same bottle?

If you're using a generic type aspirin tablet with about 325 milligrams of acetylsalicyclic acid as the active ingredient, then about 20 aspirin tablets crushed will give you about 6.5 grams of dissolved active acetylsalicylic acid in your solution after all the chalk settles out on the bottom.

The volume to add the aspirin powder to is half a pint. A pint is 473 milliliters (.473 liters), so you're adding to about 236 milliliters (.236 liters).

A weaker solution will be adding 15 aspirin tablets, that will yield about 4.875 grams of actylsalicylic acid in the 236 ml's of 70% rubbing alcohol. But this will still work fine. The main thing is to look on the back of the aspirin package and see how mnay milligrams Acetylsalicylic acid (or acetylsalicylate) each tablet contains, divide 6500 by that amount, and that gives you how many tablets to use. ie:

6500 / 325 = 20 tablets

For an aspirin tablet contain 400 active milligrams of salicylate: 6500 / 400 = 16 tablets

People here should feel encouraged to ask if they are in doubt.

**** Andrea! If Aguila feels I've answered his question and he doesn't mind, maybe you should delete or abridge his post above mentioning 300 grams, that was never implied. It would be downright dangerous to anything like this, or anywhere near this. Thanks. Feel free to delete this footnote as well.

...And to clarify, I would use only straight 70% rubbing alcohol. No water. Water doesn't help the solution at all, it only lessens the sting sensation. It's better to just put less on your skin if you don't like the discomfort of having alcohol on your skin. Also, adding water is like a chain reaction to destroy/ degrade your mixture. Because water + aspirin causes heat, and that heat in turn helps to destroy more aspirin. Aspirin in an aqueous solution is very vulnerable to heat damage. Actually, you might want to store your homemade mixture in the fridge when your done.

Thanks for a great post string.

I have told people for years to just mix up aspirin and alcohol.

Applying the product without contact with skin you don't wish to treat is a problem, but I would caution against the spray bottle thing however, because you don't want to inhale this mixture, and you surely would not want anyone to make a mistake and use this spray bottle for any other purpose. As a clear liquid, it could be mistaken for water in a spray bottle. You may be best off sticking to dipping a cotton swab into the solution, or wearing gloves and using a cotton ball.

I recommend a glass bottle with metal top with a good seal, since any plastic or vinyl container will be dissolved by this mixture over time. Even the commerical product eats its way through the cap if the product is stored on its side or upside down.

Many a purse, gymbag and medicine cabinet has seen the wrath of Tend Skin.

I'm allergic to aspirin when i take it orally. it burns wholes in my stomach, but then ai guess it does htat to everyone, no?

do you guys think that it will burn my skin if i use tend skin or a home made brew??

As with any allergy, if you have an allergy and suffer adverse reactions to aspirin, I wouldn't go near it. I would stay away from aspirin and aspirin containing products.

Hi,

This is my first post, so be gentle. I'm a 22 year old male with quite a lot of body hair, and I am very self-conscious about it (so I won't even go to the beach so that no one wonders why I won't take my shirt off). Because of this, I bought a Braun 3370 yesterday and tried it out last night. I just used it a little on the top of my chest so the hair wouldn't stick out of my shirt, and then followed up with some homemade tend skin. I also did it on my hands and feet. After a little bit, I also used some moisturizer to help the skin. When I woke up this morning, I had red bumps all over my chest where I used it. I didn't even go to work today because it looks so bad. My hands and feet are great, but not my chest. I expected some redness like the manual said I would have, but that sleeping might help with that. I did not expect all these red bumps.

What is this from? It's almost like razor burn I believe, but I did not use a razor. I have not noticed any positive (or negative) effects from the tend skin, and I couldn't feel anything when I put it on. Does that mean I made it wrong? I crushed up 20 asprin pills and put them in half a bottle of 70% alcohol. They were also the 325 mg variety with starch in them, so I figured that was the right amount. Is there any other way to get rid of these bumps? What can I do about them? What about next time, how could I prevent them? I would like to do more of my body, but definately not if I get these bumps. They don't hurt or itch, and I can barely even feel them, but they look awful.

Please help if you can, I'm not even going to leave my house until they disappear or unless I'm wearing a turtle neck.