My parents lied to me about my ancestry. The rest of my family is fair and very Anglo-Saxon: blond hair, blue eyes, and a propensity for sun burns. Somehow I ended up with dark hair, green eyes, and skin that tans at the mention of the word “sun.” So, not being prone to burning myself, I was understandably in agony when I actually ended up red, swollen, and painfully sensitive on my vacation this summer. I was willing to try anything to make the pain stop, and, after a lot of experimenting, came up with a great homemade treatment. You can buy some similar stuff ready-made in the store, but I firmly believe that the lack of preservatives and the freshness of the ingredient makes this treatment more soothing than the pre-packaged variety.

I started with a really light body mist for the immediate cooling effect. It was a great way to sooth instantly, and I kept a spray bottle of it on hand for days to mist myself. Sadly, the spray fades pretty quickly, so I added a gel mask to the treatment for more long-term soothing. I put this on my shoulders, where the burns were worst, and let it sit for 10 minutes or so. Finally, as an added bonus, I mixed up an extra-cooling lotion. After that, I stayed inside and watched TV for a few days.

After Sun Relief Treatment Recipes

Aloe Vera Body Mist

Directions:
Stir the ingredients well, mashing any lumps of aloe with a fork. Strain, set the remaining pureed aloe vera aside and pour the liquid into a spray bottle. Spray liberally all over the sun burned areas as many times a day as you want.

Sun Relief Gel Mask

Directions:
Start by piercing the gel capsules with a pin or snipping off the end with a small pair of scissors. Squirt the gel out of the capsule, into a bowl. Add the cucumber and aloe vera to the bowl and mix well, mashing with a fork as go stir. Keep stirring until the mixture is fairly consistent. Smooth the gel over the sun-burned area and leave it on for about ten minutes. It can be a little drippy, so its best to do this over a towel. Rinse off and spray with the body mist again.

Cooling Lotion

Directions:
Pierce the Vitamin E capsules and squirt the gel into a bowl. Mix in all the remaining ingredients and smear all over the sunburned area. To make it extra-soothing, refrigerate it for about twenty minutes first.

For convenience, I brought the kind of aloe that comes pre-peeled and packed in water, rather than giant stalks of it that I would have had to peel myself. I found my aloe at Whole Foods, but I’ve seen it in a lot of regular markets as well.