You may remember that I was very excited about the prospect of making my own sugar scrub, after my favorite Etsy sugar scrub shop closed. So I took this recipe from The Small Object and gave it a shot.

First try? Not so good. The recipe was way too oily for me; my hands felt like I’d been washing my body with a stick of butter, and I worried that it would ruin my towels. I even dumped in a bunch of extra sugar to try to soak up the oil, and that didn’t work. So, I used up the first batch as quickly as I could (it still felt good to use, of course!) and decided to reduce the oils in the second batch.

Here are the ingredients:

You can get them at a health food store, or perhaps at a grocery store with a big natural foods selection. Quite honestly, I had no idea what to look for when I went to the store, but managed to find the lecithin and the vitamin E at the regular grocery store and the almond oil at the health food store. The liquid lecithin was surprisingly cheap (about $3 for a big bottle), and the vitamin E was surprisingly expensive (about $10).

This is the recipe I decided to go with:

1-1/2 cups of white sugar

1 cup of raw sugar

1/2 cup of almond oil

1 teaspoon liquid lecithin

1 teaspoon vitamin E

From The Small Object’s recipe, I increased the regular sugar by a half cup, because I thought the raw sugar was a little too rough in the last batch. I dramatically reduced the almond oil (1-1/2 cups down to a half cup), and reduced both the lecithin and the vitamin E from a tablespoon to a teaspoon of each.

All you do is mix everything in a bowl (I recommend putting the sugars in first, then dumping in the oils). You can also add a few drops of essential oil for a scent, if you’re interested.

Then find a pretty container, with a good lid. I recommend plastic, rather than glass, because you don’t want to drop and break it in the shower. I re-used a sugar scrub tub that I already had, and I also bought the nicest looking Rubbermaid container I could find (to give the 2nd tub as a gift):

Once you buy the ingredients, you can make quite a few batches with it, so if you really like sugar scrub, it’s much more cost-effective to make your own. And it makes a nice gift too.

Happy Scrubbing!