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Sugar may not be good for you when you eat it, but it’s definitely great for your skin. Sugar scrub is a fantastic exfoliation method, and personally, living here in Utah with a very dry climate, it’s a MUST for my skin needs. It needs to both moisturize and scrub away dead skin cells-and to be completely honest, it has to smell amazing at the same time or I want no part of it.

When Kristina and I got together to make our handmade bath salts last Christmas as gifts, it occurred to us that some of our friends didn’t have bathtubs-so giving them bath salts would be kind of a crappy gift. That’s when the idea of putting together a sugar scrub came to life and it was almost as easy and inexpensive as the bath salts.

What You’ll Need to Make Sugar Scrub

Sugar (white or brown)

Base Oil (I prefer coconut, but Olive or Almond are also great)

Essential Oil (make sure it’s not just a scented oil-it needs to be essential so it’s safe for skin and not chemical)

How to Make This Sugar Scrub

Your ratio for this mix is going to be 2|1. 2 cups Sugar to 1 cup base oil. Coconut oil is pretty responsive to temperature so I had to heat mine up for about 30 seconds to make it mixable. As for the essential oil it can take quite a bit more to stand out with this mix, so I put about 20 drops of essential oil in mine to make the smell stand out. For this tutorial I’m using Lime, which goes wonderfully with the coconut. I also threw in about 2 drops of food coloring. I used green to match up with the lime.When we picked did our bottles of sugar scrub in bulk for gifts we hit Costco and bought a huge bag of sugar (25lbs-I still have about a quarter of it in my cupboard) for about $10. The Coconut oil was a little more money, we bought 2 giant jars of it for about $25 at costco, but I’ve since picked up some smaller jars (which are great for a batch or two) at Trader Joes for only $5 each. They probably even out to about the same cost in the long run. If you want a really high-quality coconut oil, then I suggest you visit Gold Bee Nutrition instead – it may cost a little more, but it’s worth every penny. Olive oil was definitely cheaper, but it doesn’t smell nearly as good. However, it was totally necessary since I have a friend who’s allergic to coconut and I really wanted to make her some sugar scrub. I also used olive for my dad since it smelled a little more “manly.”

Put it all together and mix it up. It smells amazing and it’s totally natural and safe-it’s even edible, though I don’t recommend eating it-it’s not necessarily good for you even if it does taste kind of awesome. Throw it in a jar and put it in your bathroom. It has a shelf life of about 2 months (or more if you keep it in a cool dark cupboard so the oils don’t sour) but you’ll probably use it all up before that time. It’s so inexpensive and easy you can use it like crazy and not worry about breaking the bank.