Easy Salt Scrub Tutorial

Wintertime has a tendency to take it out on our skin. The extremes in temperature and often the harsh wind can chap, chafe and dry out skin causing it to become red, dull and flaky On of the simplest and one of the most fun solutions to this problem is to exfoliate and moisturize and what better way to do it than by making and using your own salt scrub? Here is the simplest and most basic recipe.

To make approx 250 ml (approx1 cup) of salt scrub you will need
150 ml of your oil of choice. I prefer to use a mix of grapeseed and sweet almond oil as they sink into your skin nicely. If you want to get more exotic you can use coconut oil, or jojoba. I don't recommend using corn oil, mineral oil, baby oil or cooking oil, and olive oil should be used when mixed with another lighter oil as it gets sticky and leaves residue if used in too high of a concentration.
300 ml fine salt (For those with sensitive skin, you can alway substitute sugar for the salt, but remember to rinse well, and you won't have the added cleansing benefit of the salt)

Mix the two together well in a separate bowl then pour into a jar and seal. If you are on a budget, the Dorito's brand salsa and chip dip jars (and other jars of a similar shape) work very well. I like to spray paint the lids or cover them in decoupage or a pretty fabric. To use your scrub, simply get a handful and scrub onto dry skin then rinse off with warm water, or soap in a hot bath after to use it as a bath salt soak!

If you want to make the recipe a bit more interesting, you can get fancier ingredients, like Sea salt, Epsom salts or Dead Sea salts instead of plain table salt. You can use any combination of salts you'd like. There are lots of different types of salts out there, including black and pink ones! For colouring, I like to add a dash of powdered mica pigment (or loose mineral eyeshadow which is pretty much the same thing) to mine and a few drops of my favourite essentil oils or oil based perfumes to give it a nice scent. Alternately, you can steep herbs and flowers or plants that give off a dye in your oil of choice and heat it up until the oil has gotten the colour from the plants. I did a fun berry scrub once and soaked raspberries in hot oil for a few hours, strained it, and added it to my salts. The result was a lovely fruity smelling pink scrub! You can also add dried herbs such as lavender or rose petals or chamomile. For herbs you can leave them chunky to add the the aesthetic appeal, or you can powder them to make a finer scrub. You can also add things like Vitamin E, Shea butter (melted of course!) or glitters! To add these extra ingredients, remember to always mix the dry ingredients together first, and the wet ingredients together before mixing everything. This way you will get a more uniform product.