Body Scrubs

I love when I can find things to make with the kids as gifts.

And a few months ago someone posted a link for Domino Sugar's recipe for a sugar scrub.

Way too easy.

Then I saw another, over at Chin Deep, and then one at Good Life Eats

Greenbean's Crafterole has one, and so does Northern Cottage.

There are so many ways to make a scrub, you can go as simple as hand dish soap and sugar to buying all the fancy oils at the craft shop and kosher salt.



What the girls and I figured out was this.
Do what you want.
It's a body scrub, meant to help remove dead skin and rough spots.

Now there are a few good tips we want to share, along with what we did for our scrubs.

First-
Your container-use whatever you want as long as it's spill proof, but do consider where it will be used.
One of the sites I visited mentioned glass in the bathroom is a bad combination.

Luckily, you can buy these nice plastic screw top storage containers. Problem solved.

Also, don't make your container too big. Especially if your going with all the special essential oils, that can be a big dollar investment.

Now the only thing you really need to have to make a scrub is granulated sugar and liquid.

Recipe #1

Sugar and Dish Soap

Measure your sugar into your container, then pour it into your mixing bowl.  Now add the liquid soap till you have the right consistency.

I had to try this to believe it so we made some last week. I kept it by the kitchen sink and every night after I finished the dishes, I gave my hands a little mini massage with the scrub. Wonderful!

Recipe #2

Using Sugar and oil

Again, measure sugar into your container then pour into mixing bowl.

Use any oil you want, Domino's recipe uses vegetable oil, I saw one recipe using olive oil, another sunflower oil, then you have your essential oils (vitamin E, blah, blah, blah)

We went with the vegetable oil. (We tried one with the olive oil but the oil scent was too strong for my tastes)

Now here's what I really liked about the scrubs we made. Northern Cottage's recipe made a light bulb go off for me. Her recipe had peppermint extract in it.

I've got tons of that stuff. And I like when a scrub smells good!

Depending on the size of your container will decide how much extract you need. We started with 1/2 teaspoon for a small container.

Then we added our oil and adjusted to taste (smell, you know what I mean.)

Then spoon back into container, wipe your rim off and add lid.

For our plastic containers, we used about 2 teaspoons of extract.

My top 3 picks for extracts are

Peppermint
Lemon
Chocolate

We also tried using lemon juice but I wasn't thrilled with how much we needed to add to make it smell lemony and also worried about the spoilage factor.

Now make it look pretty with some ribbon. I found these cute tags at Dollar General, for just $1.00

And you know somethings good when you're sitting at the table telling your daughters which flavors you would be happy to receive as a present....

I've linked up over at Newlywed's Blog