Homemade Sugar Scrub

In the spirit of blogging , I've found myself following the crowd and spent one afternoon early in the week making ... This .

Looks so gross, right? I know. But hear me out on this one. This is my very own homemade sugar scrub, and I was shocked by how easy it was to make . I'm not normally very thrifty, so homemade sugar scrub is probably something I would have just scrolled past if I was at home, but instead I'm in the middle of rural Spain, and exfoliator (or a decent exfoliator in any case) is nigh on impossible to find. So, in the spirit of getting a non streaky fake tan, I set about finding a recipe that used components I'd be able to find in a village that doesn't even sell make-up. After reading through a couple of online recipes, I found out the basic components were just olive oil and brown sugar. Ok, that I could do. So, I set about making it, with the help of some diluted lemon juice (to help counteract the smell of the brown sugar which is, well... Rank.)

I won't lie it wasn't successful , I mean sure it worked , but the smell made me want to retch, and I'd added way too much oil, I found myself having to drain it every time I went to use it.

Ok, time for round two. This time I used about equal parts of white and brown sugar (probably more white , I ran out of brown not so far in, but it was pretty close to half and half), the addition of the white sugar took the edge off the horrible smell. To this I added enough lemon juice  to cover the sugar and about 5 capfuls of olive oil. When this soaked in, about a quarter of the sugar had dissolved away so I mixed in more sugar and added a tiny bit of water and a few more capfuls of oil (if you feel like you've added too much water it's pretty easy to drain off) and I ended up with the picture above.

Ok it looked gross but so does a streaky tan, so I gave it a fair go. I have to say , it works. I'm keen on quite a rough exfoliator and this is one, more so than a shop bought one. It really works, so much so I'm considering swapping it out for my regular soap and glory flake away when I get home.

If I made it at home in England, I'd probably use all white sugar, add some food colouring and maybe a mint or vanilla essence to achieve a nice smell, but even my gross looking, dubious smelling one does the job so well, it's worth putting up with .

Have you ever made any DIY cosmetics or skincare? If not , why not give it a try?

Sammy xo