Beauty Tips and Tricks: Homemade Body Scrubs

I had a reader ask me if I knew any ways to make body scrubs so I thought I would post a few tips here about how to put together a body scrub. The great thing about homemade body scrubs is the fact that you can add or remove certain ingredients. This way the body scrub is made just for you and has everything you need in it.

The only real important ingredients in a body scrub is the actual exfoliate and an oil. That is really all you need, but there are other things that you can add to your body scrub that can make it that much better. To start, figure out what type of exfoliate you want to use. Most common are either salt or sugar. I prefer to use sugar. Salt is a little harsh on the skin to me and can sometimes leave you with tiny cuts or irritation. Sometimes people skip the oil and just rub coffee grinds on themselves. It exfoliates, but also helps reduce the appearance of cellulite. Believe it or not it works. If your going to use coffee grinds, I would recommend only using it on your legs. Once you have picked which type of exfoliate you want to use, choose your oil to mix with it.

Olive oil is the most common one used. If I am not using olive oil then I turn to grape-seed oil. If I have both of them, which most of the time I do, then I use them both. Once you have these two ingredients your pretty much ready. You mix up however much you will need. I typically make about a cup full for my entire body and never really measure. You want to go for a thick consistency that you can work into your skin.

I opt to add a few extra things into my body scrub. Most commonly I add Vitamin E. In general, Vitamin E works wonders. It is good for moisturizing, speeding up the healing time of bruises and reducing the visibility of scars, amongst many other things. I have a jar full of the gel-caps that I just pop open and mix with random things. If I have honey I toss that in there as well.

You can also add some essential oils to your scrub if you like. I am not much for fragrances in my scrubs, I think they are not needed, but sometimes it is nice to have a hint of something in there. Commonly you will see lavender added to a body scrub. It is soothing and relaxing. Or you could Juniper Oil which is good for reducing stress and supposedly water retention as well.

Now I don’t have an exact recipe for you to try, but I will try to see what I can dig up for those of you who are interested. I usually wing it and it comes out perfect. I find most people don’t even have a separate body exfoliate that they use once a week when they shower. Trust me, your skin will be so much smoother if you start adding this to your routine.