Exfoliation doesn't always reach the top of the list when it comes to skin care in the winter months (for me, personally!), but now that it's summer time, why not do your body a favour and get scrubbing! Simply adding exfoliation to your skin care regime can work wonders. It gets rid of dead skin cells, dull or flaky patches, and leaves you with beautiful soft glowing skin. This post is about about exfoliation for the body, not the face! I find that if I use a scrub on my face my skin becomes irritated, so I simply use oatmeal, as it's a natural and extremely gentle exfoliant.
I used to be very lazy when it came to exfoliating in the shower or bath, but when I eventually started to read about the importance of this step in a skin care regime, I decided to try and exfoliate a few times week. This was a few years ago, before I started getting in to natural skin care. What I soon realised was that this was a fairly expensive addition to my shower time! My skin is quite sensitive, so I found that if I went for the cheapest brands, the beads would be too big and harsh, resulting in very irritated. My only other option (or so I thought) was to go for the more expensive brands, and I wasn't happy spending this kind of money on products that only tended to last me a couple of weeks. So now for the past couple of years I have been making my own scrubs! They're fun to make, super easy to put together and completely natural. Not only will you save money by making these, but you'll know exactly what you're putting on your skin, which can rarely be said for store bought skincare items.
Ok, so enough rambling, lets get on to the scrub!
What you'll need:
- Organic brown sugar
- An oil of your choice (recently I've been loving Sweet Almond Oil for this)
- A lemon
- A glass jar with a tight fitting lid to store the scrub in
You can use regular sugar if you want, however if you have sensitive skin like me then brown sugar is a better choice. Brown sugar will give you a more gentle (yet thorough!) exfoliation.
How to make the scrub
- Fill your glass jar 3/4 of the way with the sugar. This roughly how much you'll need. Pour the sugar back into a bowl for mixing
- The ratio of the mixture should be one part oil to two parts sugar, so fill your jar a little below half way with your oil of choice. Again, pour this back into the bowl and mix together with the sugar.
- Depending on whether you want your scrub to be more solid or oily, you can add more sugar or oil if desired.
- Grate the zest of one lemon and add to the mixture.
- Now add in the juice of half a lemon. When you have mixed everything together, you can add in more lemon juice/zest if you wish.
- Pop the mixture back into your glass jar and store in the fridge
So there you have it, a super simple recipe for a home-made scrub. I use this 2-3 times a week in the shower and find that it leaves my skin so soft and glowy. The dry patches on my elbows have disappeared and I feel that the addition of the lemon has had a firming effect on my skin too! If you use fake tan then this scrub would be great for you, it will banish any dry patches of skin on your elbows, knees and feet so that dark patches of tan don't remain there.
Happy Scrubbing!
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