First of all, scrubs are called by the wrong word.  The dictionary defines scrub as to rub hard in order to clean.  Now, I see a scrub as a mixture of exfoliating, moisturizing and cleaning  ingredients,  that smells exciting and leaves your skin feeling renewed, soft and looking wonderful.  So if anyone know of a better word please let me know.

All scrubs contain an ingredient to exfoliate. We’ll call this group column A.  (Exfoliating is removing the top layer of skin.)  Some common ingredients are sugar (in all it’s forms), salt, finely ground nuts or beans, pumice, seeds, oatmeal, cornmeal, finely ground plant materials such as leaves or peels  and finely ground shells such as pecan or walnut.  They can be coarse or almost like powder.  The next ingredients to consider are the moisturizers and cleansers. Well call these column B. For these you use fine oils, butters, soaps and glycerin. The final group are the wonderful extras.  Those are column C.  Here we consider essential oils, vitamin E,  aloe vera, clays, dried petals such as rose and marigold, allantoin, seaweed and this list could just go on and on!

 

A   Exfoliators	B   Moisturizers & Cleaners	C   Specials
sugar	sweet almond oil	essential oils
salt	grapeseed oil	clays
ground nuts & beans	olive oil	allantoin
ground oatmeal	avocado oil	flower  petals
cornmeal	apricot kernel oil	seaweed
finely ground peels   & leaves	shea butter	powdered herbs
pumice	cocoa  butter	vitamin E
seeds	macadamia oil	fresh purees
finely ground shells	glycerin	any non irritating skin care item

So let’s put a scrub together.  The simplest scrub is one from column A and one from column B.  Just combine oil and salt or sugar.  Place the oil in a bowl and rub or mix in the salt or sugar until the mixture resembles wet sand.  Wet skin and GENTLY massage a small amount on, then rinse and gently blot dry.  Almost everyone can just make this from ingredients from the kitchen.  Vary the oils and add some butters according to what your skin likes.  This very simple scrub can be made more elegant by adding some great stuff from column C.  My favorite scrub of this kind is a mixture of sweet almond and grapeseed oils, mixed with white sugar.  I add from column C dried rose petals, and rose geranium essential oil.  This type of scrub can be made to be firmer, like the Bert’s Bees Citrus Scrub. For a scrub like this mix glycerin, and oil such as sweet almond and use ground almonds, oats and peels as the exfoliators. Add some goodies from column C and you  are there.  This type of scrub is usually paste or putty-like and is used by placing a small amount in your palm and adding water to moisten it to rub on.

Another type of scrub has soap added into it.  You can use liquid soap, melt and pour or cold process soap. For this type, place 8 parts of your choice of oils in a double boiler, heat and add 4 parts of finely shredded soap.  Continue heating and mixing with the stick blender until it resembles traced soap then add 3 parts sugar or salt.  Mix well and cool then add the goodies from column C.  Variations of this are also made with liquid and melt and pour soaps.

So consider where you want to use the scrub, face, hands, feet or body. Your hands and feet will be fine with a more coarse scrub then the face but remember that we are still talking about skin!  Consider the properties of the butters and oils you want to add, then add some specials from the last group. Be sure to consider that some spices, essential oils and other ingredients are irritating to the skin.

I make my scrubs without water and in small batches so I do not use a preservative but I do add vit. E (Tocopherol)  to help the oils from becoming rancid.  If you add water or purees then you must either use it right away or preserve the scrub appropriately.
 So experiment and enjoy ~ the perfect scrub is the one you make to match your skin and purpose.