Cucumber is a versatile and wonderful beauty treatment! It helps make your complexion more beautiful in many ways. It’s also a great addition to your diet–although it’s about 95% water, it also contains fiber so nibbling on it or adding it to a salad can help with hunger pangs.

Just one of the ways cucumber can help beautify your skin: make a toner from the juice. Use the juice of one whole peeled cucumber, finely strained so that the juice will be seedless. You can also use the type of cucumbers without seeds, but sometimes they are much more expensive. Shop around to see if you can find bargains–as the seedless kind become more common, the price goes down, and straining the juice can be a bit labor-intensive. You may want to peel them, slice them and then seed them, then place in a blender. You want as much juice as possible!

But for your toner…Take the juice for the large cucumber and add about 1/8 tablespoon each of lemon juice and orange juice. Add rosewater to double the amount of liquid. Sweep over your face with a cotton pad to tighten pores and add moisture. Keep the toner in the refrigerator to make it last longer and to also give it a cool and refreshing feeling. Use regularly, and you’ll notice brighter and healthier looking skin.

If you need an astringent to combat oil and blemishes, cucumber juice can help with those skin conditions as well. Add the juice of one whole cucumber, rosewater and 70% rubbing alcohol in equal proportions to use as an astringent. The vitamin C that occurs in cucumber acts as a natural astringent, so if the alcohol seems to be too drying to your skin, use less of it and more of the cucumber juice. This astringent can also help take the sting out of insect bites (as long as the skin isn’t broken).

To help with dark circles and puffiness under your eyes, here’s a wonderful and all-natural treatment. Add 1/4 cup of cucumber juice to 1/4 potato juice and chill. Dab the mixture under your eye area, and place chilled cucumber slices over your eyes. Put your feet up and relax for about 15 minutes, rinse and you’ll be surprised how much the puffiness is gone.

But getting juice from a potato doesn’t sound very easy, does it? If you have a juicer…you’re all set, and actually a juicer is a really versatile –but pricey–appliance to have. If you don’t have one, just put about 2 peeled potatoes in a blender, then strain the pulp well. One way to strain both potatoes and cucumbers for their juice is to use cheesecloth. It takes a while to strain it this way, but ultimately you’ll get more juice.

So those are just a few ways to use the cooling and refreshing properties of cucumber. And it smells nice, too!