Sugar & Spice for Somebody Nice: DIY Brown Sugar Lip Scrub

This DIY brown sugar lip scrub (and/or DIY brown sugar body scrub) is super simple to make, and makes a nice holiday gift or stocking stuffer, especially if you use my free printable labels. 

With the coming of winter and the cooler weather, my normally very oily skin starts to develop dry areas that need some extra care. For skin on the body, salt and sugar scrubs are a great way to help exfoliate and moisturize all at once.

You could, of course, buy either a lip or body sugar scrub, but why would you want to spend more on a product that could be filled with a lot of unwanted ingredients when it is so easy to make your own and control what goes into it? (Check out the price on this one!!!)

Making salt and sugar scrubs is very easy. Basically, you just combine salt or sugar with your choice of oil(s) and then you can customize your mixture even further with essential oils or other ingredients like spices to add flavor and scent.

I can write more about salt and sugar scrubs some other day, but today I want to concentrate on one particular scrub, a DIY brown sugar lip scrub.

In the winter it is quite common for some people to have dry, cracking, peeling lips. I'm pretty lucky to not normally have that problem, but I still like to give special attention to my lips this time of year.

When it comes to making scrubs, salt it the most abrasive choice, sugar is a little less harsh, and brown sugar is the gentlest of all. So, for a lip scrub, brown sugar is the perfect choice.

My favorite choice of oils for the body is coconut oil. That said, this time of year, coconut oil can be pretty difficult to work with because it becomes solid below 76ºF (25ºC). For a lip scrub, I didn't want a perfectly liquid oil, but I didn't want it to be completely solid either, because that makes it very difficult to use. I settled for a mix of oils, and used around 75% coconut oil and 25% almond oil.

Holiday Gingerbread Brown Sugar Lip Scrub

Sugar & Spice for Somebody Nice: Holiday Brown Sugar Lip Scrub

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Recipe Type DIY products

Cuisine Beauty Products

Ingredients

• coconut sugar or enough brown sugar to fill up the container
• coconut oil
• sweet almond oil
• gingerbread spices powdered ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, & cloves

Instructions

1. Fill the container with brown sugar almost to the top.
2. Stir in the mixture of spices. The amount will depend upon the size of your container, and your own personal taste. At this point you can try tasting it and smelling it to see if you like the combination and the amount added. Have fun experimenting!
3. Melt the coconut oil and pour some into your container. If you prefer that the oil stay in it's liquid form for easier use, use fractionated coconut oil. I used around 75% coconut oil.
4. Fill the rest of the jar with almond oil or another oil of your choice. I used around 25% almond oil in mine.
5. Stir everything together until it is well combined and allow it to cool. The coconut oil will harden up somewhat if you haven't chosen fractionated oil, and, depending upon the temperature at your house, you should end up with a semi-solid gel-like consistency.

You can now use your lip scrub! To use it, just take a little bit and rub it gently on your lips to help exfoliate them. Lick off the brown sugar, and the remaining oils should help keep your lips soft and smooth. While I was at it, I decided to make a matching body scrub. I wanted it to be slightly more exfoliating for my body, so I added in quite a bit of white sugar. Despite more than half of the sugar being normal, white sugar, the mix stayed nice and brown. I like that look because it makes me think of gingerbread, and makes it perfect for gift giving in the holidays! For the body scrub, I used a higher percentage of liquid oil, too. I wanted the lip scrub to go on more like a gloss, but I wanted the body scrub to go on more easily because you need to be able to use more at a time for your body. In the summer, I do use an all coconut oil scrub, but in winter, it is just too difficult to use. The oils you choose, though, are really up to you. For gift giving, I made a cute little label for the scrubs. Fell free to use mine if you like.

I can't wait to hop into the shower to try mine out. I'm trying not to mix it all into my coffee first, though… Ah, the temptations that arise when you make body care products with ingredients you can eat!

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