You can make wonderful body scrubs that will leave your skin feeling silky and smooth for days on end.

Scrubs are made of salts or sugars both white and brown, and oils such as olive oil, cocoa butter or sweet almond oil for moisturizing.

Body scrubs gently exfoliate the skin and help to increase circulation. To make your own scrub, first you want to decide if you would like it to be a sugar or salt scrub. Please note that although salt invigorates your skin to a greater degree than a sugar scrub, it also stings if you have small nicks or cuts on your skin.

Once you have chosen your main scrub ingredient, you then want to choose an oil that is skin friendly. Now I have known of others who have used vegetable oils or baby oil (mineral oils), but I would not recommend that you use these oils on your body.

Mineral oils clog the pores whereas vegetable oil is a bit heavy and can cause your skin to feel greasy after your bath.

You will want to use skin-loving oil that does not leave a greasy feel that’s absorbed through the skin for moisturizing. Grape seed oil is the perfect oil for skin, and is used in a lot of today’s modern massage oils. Sweet almond oil is another that is light and good for your skin. Another, more readily available oil is olive oil.

Cocoa butter is another oil that makes a wonderful solid scrub massage bar that is truly exhilarating.

To make your scrub, first pour your desired amount of salt or sugar into a bowl (you can also mix ingredients to make a sugar AND salt scrub) add a small amount of fragrance to scent to your liking, then add enough oil to make a thick slushy paste.

You can mix and match oils, as well as adding other ingredients like dried herbs, liquid soap for lather, baking soda to clarify skin, honey for moisture, or skin clays to help draw out impurities.

When developing your recipe, make sure that you write down the amount of each ingredient that you use. This way you can recreate the recipe again in the future. You can test your scrub on your hands. If it seems to have too much liquid then add more dry ingredients…if it does not run smoothly onto your skin due to it being too thick, add more oil.

To make a solid scrub bar, first find something that can be used as a mold to make hand sized bars. Small Tupperware containers or ice cube trays work well. Next, make a thick paste of scrub using cocoa butter instead of liquid oil. Melt the cocoa butter gently on your stovetop or in your microwave. Let it cool a bit so that your salt or sugar will not dissolve when added to the mix. Next, add your fragrances and other additives that you like, then your salt or sugar until the mass forms a very thick paste about the consistency of thick bread dough. Pack your mixture into your molds, tap your molds on your counter to eliminate any air bubbles, then stick this into your freezer until frozen. Freezing your bars helps them to release from the molds much easier than by trying to remove them at room temperature.

Your bars should be ready to remove from your freezer within 12 hours. Once removed, place them in a bowl while they thaw to make sure they stay solid. If you used too much liquid, then they may melt into a regular liquid scrub. This can still be used, though. If this happens, just add more dry ingredients to your recipe the next time you try it.

If your bars are too crumbly, then they need more cocoa butter. To fix this mishap, just crumble the mixture up really well; add more melted cocoa butter and place them back into the freezer.

When making your recipes, you cannot go wrong if you use the ingredients listed in this article. You can always add more oils, or scrub ingredients, to modify your recipe until it feels right for your particular skin type.

Your bars can be stored in a regular soap dish. The liquid scrubs can be stored in any container with a lid. Unfortunately, most scrubs are too thick for use in pump soap dispencers. When storing your scrubs, make sure that you use them within a month as you have not added any preservatives to keep them fresh. I would not recommend reselling scrubs that do not have preservatives in them either; they are best kept for personal use only.

Also, oils are slippery, use caution when getting in and out of your tub after using these scrubs. Also, keep out of reach of children, these are not suitable for young skin, and if you are elderly please use something that is not so slippery in your tub such as dry herb baths for your safety.