DIY Sugar Scrub

Although April's DIY is a little late in posting, I didn't forget to do one!

The past two months have been pretty crazy with finals, school ending, and getting things done to be admitted to my next step; NAU. Words cannot describe how great it feels to no longer have to worry about this stuff anymore, it's done! 

Aside from doing those things, I have been spending a lot of time considering what I wanted to do this month for my DIY. With summer fast approaching, pedicures and manicures are becoming bright, bold colors. As the darker tones disappear until fall comes to us again, I started to notice that my hands and feet were becoming pretty dry. 

Now when I say dry, I mean DRY. My hands are prone to being dry anyways, but with this Arizona heat, it's hard for skin to stay moisturized all day. One of the reasons for this is because the top layer of our skin dries out and although the layers underneath may be healthy, it's hard for moisture and lotion to bring those dry layers back to life. This is why it's important to exfoliate! 

I could have easily went to the store and grabbed the first bottle of hand or foot scrub I saw, but those products are so expensive and they have harsh chemicals that aren't always so great for us and end up drying out skin even worse than before. For this DIY I decided to make my own. 

There are plenty of different ways to make various scrubs, but I tailored this one to my hands and feet. 

My hands tend to get really shiny and oily when I use certain lotions or body products. After looking at different ways to make scrubs on the internet, I decided on one that avoided oils for my first go around. It's also ridiculously easy AND cheap.

To make this scrub, you only really need two ingredients; sugar and Dawn brand dish soap with Olay hand renewal. The reason for this soap and not others is that this soap is specifically formulated to add moisture back into your hands while doing dishes. It's creamier than other typical dish soaps that tend to dry hands out. 

You can definitely make this scrub when you need it without pre making it, but I decided to pre make mine and put it into a container. It just makes it easier to have a container of it next to my sink for me to use whenever I want to. 

In order to measure out the correct amount of sugar, and since this is the volume of the product, I poured the sugar into the container I was going to keep it in.

I filled it to the bottom of the lip of the jar. Since the sugar tends to condense when any type of liquid comes into contact with it, I knew this was a safe place to start.

I added the sugar from my container to a larger bowl so that it was a little bit easier to mix the ingredients together. 

There really is no specific amount of soap to add. I started with a little amount and worked my way up to the consistency that I preferred.

When adding the soap to the sugar, it really sticks to the sugar that it first comes into contact with resulting in chunks. If you keep kneading the mixture together, the rest of the sugar will stick to the soap. You can tell by looking at it if you need to add more soap or sugar, but try to make it look like the consistency of frosting (although, I don't think it would taste as good haha!). Also during this step I added more sugar and more soap because I knew that the sugar that I had originally had would condense once the soap was added, making less scrub.

This is the consistency it should have. I didn't want mine to be too liquid-y just because I wanted a thick scrub. If your skin needs just a little buffing, you could add more soap so that it's not super thick and abrasive. This is also the step where you could add some essential oils if you wanted them. I opted out for my first go around. 

When I was finished mixing it together, I added it into this cute little container and added a twine bow!

 I pair this scrub with Goldbond hand lotion and it is the best combo! Using a lotion with any exfoliating scrub is a great idea.

After using this scrub before bed consistently for about a week, I noticed that my hands were much healthier in their look and feel. This also makes a nice scrub for those rough cuticles or callouses that you may obtain after a long day at work. If you love manicures and pedicures like I do, this makes an awesome first step. It gets your nails and hands clean and exfoliated, which is a great foundation for nail polish!

Do you have someone that you need a gift for but don't have a ton to spend? This makes a wonderful gift AND it's thoughtful for someone like a mother or a sister. 

Enjoy!