Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Figgy Pudding Body Scrub

Finished Product
Buying scrubs has been difficult for me, since they can be pricy and I go through them quickly. I've taken to making my own over the past several years, and here is a recent experiment: Figgy Pudding Body Scrub.

Ingredients:
16 oz demerara sugar
2 oz fig powder
1 tablespoon walnut shell powder
Pumpkin seed oil
Dry ingredients
Directions:
Mix dry ingredients together, trying to break up any clumps. Add oil to desired consistency.

I had these ingredients on hand, and had wanted to use the fig powder in a scrub. Mixing it with the demerara sugar worked out well, since they give the finished product a sweet scent.

I through in the walnut shell after finding a small sample bag and deciding I might as well try it. I'm not sure it adds much to the finished product, but it does add a finer grain to the mix.

I don't like my scrubs overly oily, so I went light on the oil, probably about 6 oz. You could probably add quite a bit more oil. The pumpkin seed oil has a bit of a nutty scent, and a dark color, and could be substituted with a more neutral oil.

I left out scent because I wanted to appreciate the light figgy molasses scent from the ingredients used. I had thought of adding some vanilla oleoresin or absolute, but those can be hard to mix in, and I wanted to make something quick and easy.

Other ingredients I considered but skipped include some sort of surfactant, like polysorbate, an antioxidant, and a preservative. If making this for sale, a preservative would be a must, since it would be exposed to water in the shower. Since this was for personal use, I left it out. Also, adding an antioxidant so that the oil wouldn't turn rancid would be necessary for a sale product, but since I'm using this up pretty quickly, I'm not concerned about the product going rancid.

The final result is a scrub that worked pretty well for me. The pumpkin seed oil did turn my skin a greenish-yellow, but soaping up after scrubbing solves that problem. The sugar crystals are a little large, but did not irritate my skin- if you try to really rub it in, I imagine it could hurt more though.