As I was scrolling through my Pinterest feed one night, as per my usual procrastination routine, I stumbled across a do-it-yourself facial and body scrub. The Pinterest link advertised a DIY salt scrub, adorably packaged in a mason jar and tied with a twine bow. The thumbnail brought me to a recipe from TheBeautyDepartment.com, one of Lauren Conrad’s beauty blogs that she runs with her make-up artist. Of course my own concoction ended up nothing like LC’s creation… I’ll tell you a little bit about how it went for me.
I did a little more research online (AKA searching Pinterest) and found a few more recipes similar to The Beauty Department’s. One of which involved sugar and coconut oil instead of olive oil and salt, which sounded much more pleasant. This was the one that I was determined to try.
First I asked myself, “Where can I find coconut oil?” So, I did what any sensible girl would do, and asked my mom. To no avail, she told me that the closest thing we had to coconut oil was peanut oil, but there was no way I was going to rub that all over myself and end up smelling like a PB&J sandwich. And of course it was about 10:00 p.m., and there was no way I was leaving my house to find coconut oil, so back to the olive oil recipe it was.
However, the olive oil and salt seemed a little too close to something that I would put on my pasta when I’m cooking for myself at college, sans garlic. So instead of using salt with olive oil, I figured I would try using sugar and combine the two recipes. Sugar and olive oil might not have been the ideal combination, but whatever. I was working with what I could find in my kitchen, and I needed to be a little creative. Also, I added some freshly squeezed lemon juice into the mix as recommended by The Beauty Department.
This ingredient swap is something that I’m happy I did, considering how much of this scrub ended up getting in my mouth instead of on my skin. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be swallowing a mouthful of sugar rather than salt. But I digress, the point is that my efforts were successful, and this DIY scrub actually worked really well.
The sugar definitely helped to clear my pores and exfoliate my skin. Since the ingredients are completely natural, it’s OK to use this mixture all over your skin, just try to avoid your eyes because the lemon juice would definitely sting! The scrub also worked extremely well on areas that typically dry-out, like the elbows.
The exfoliating sugar sloughed away dry skin while the oil moisturized better than anything that I have ever tried before; my skin was smoother than ever. But one thing that I advise is not to put this on your feet unless you are sitting down! You will be sliding all over your shower since the oil shows no mercy when it comes to slipping and sliding. And yes, I fell in the shower while trying this; I know that you were all wondering.