I haven't felt this particular frisson of excitement since I wrote about a home-made body scrub I whipped up more than two years ago. :-) That sometimes we find the best beauty products in our very own kitchen is a truth my subconscious mind is well aware of, but my conscious brain does need a reminder every now and then.
You know how it is in winter: dry, flaky skin, your body itches the more you scratch it (there was absolutely no innuendo intended here), and you oftentimes wish you could just be like a snake and shed it... The cold, the absolute lack of humidity in the air, the heating: none of these are particularly beneficial to your skin. So what do you do then? Yeah, you slather your epidermis* with body lotion after you get out of the shower, except when you don't/won't, because despite the fact that you've been heating the bathroom for hours, it still feels more like a Nordic Viking's idea of hell than a proper bathroom.
* I totally ran out of options here... I mean I can't say "skin" five times in a paragraph, now can I? Even if English is more forgiving about it than Hungarian.
Finally you just get fed up, and decide to raid your kitchen in the hopes of finding some remedy to your skin's atrocious condition. You get creative and you concoct the perfect solution to your predicament.
Voilà. Binary Star Studios present Izar's Inexpensive and Invigorating Body Scrub that, despite being just a simple body scrub, will put an end to all your skin troubles at once.
Instructions:
- Take a (clean!) vessel of any kind. It can be a simple cup or, if you wish to make a bigger batch at a time and store the leftovers for future use, a glass jar.
- Fill your cup with sugar and add a spoonful of olive oil. Mix the two until the oil coats the the sugar thoroughly.
- Add a teaspoonful of ground coffee and a teaspoonful of cinnamon powder. Mix well with the sugar. (I used my Dad's precious Arabica blend, but what he doesn't know won't get me in trouble, right? :-D)
- Add a drop of sweet-orange essential oil or, if you're lucky like me and are in the possession of Alverde's Blood Orange and Maracuja Body Oil, then add a teaspoonful of that.
- Now take some time and mix the whole thing as thoroughly as you can. When you deem your body scrub to be ready, just march into your bathroom, take a shower and then go over your whole body with this deliciously scented scrub, then rinse.
- When you're done, marvel at your brand new skin that doesn't itch, isn't dry and flaky, smells like a confectionery and is smooth and conditioned thanks to the oils in the scrub.
If you don't really like the scent of coffee, you can leave it out or use less, but I really do encourage you to use it as it adds some extra, non-melting scrubby bits to the mix. Then again, because the sugar is coated in oil, it melts much-much slower than it would otherwise.
Keep in mind though that this stuff is not for the faint of heart: it does have a very intense smell and is pretty rough on your body, but it does wonders to skin that's been tortured by winter weather. You can store it in an airtight jar in your fridge, just make sure you don't contaminate it:
Don't scoop it out with your wet hands! Water will make the sugar melt, not to mention provide a great breeding ground for germs. Use a small spoon for that purpose, one you can even store in the jar if you want.
Well, that's it! Of course, you can get creative too and come up with all sorts of variations for this: you can change the base and use something more gentle, like ground almonds or walnuts, or you can add different spices to the mix, or leave everything as it is, except use less coffee and add some cocoa-powder. Just try not to use anything that has water in it: you really don't want to end up with a jarful of totally useless sugar syrup, now do you? ;-)
Good luck, and if you have your own home-made wonder-products, do share them with us!
Izar,
I love the post...! Your bodyscrub is easy to make and safer than the products available on the market too, plus, it smells yummy! :-D A small question though: how long can I keep the leftovers in fridge?
Fan
xoxoxo
PS Since when did you set up the Binary Star Studios? :-P I'm looking forward to more recipes from you! :-D
Hey Fan,
Thanks! It's just nice to have something so inexpensive and readily available at our fingertips, isn't it?
Did you actually make the scrub? :-)
About its shelf-life (or more like "fridge-life": I think it's safe to store this in the fridge for at least a week, maybe two, if we take good care to handle it very carefully (spoon, people, spoon! :-D). Any funny smells and dump it into the trashcan though. Better safe than sorry. ;)
Izar
xoxoxo
PS: Haha, since today. :-DDD
It's nothing serious, but I do like to tinker in the kitchen and play with ingredients, hence two of my hobbies: baking and formulating cosmetics for myself.
I'll probably share a few more recipes in the near future. ;-)
Ahh, this body scrub sounds sooo delicious! Maybe I should try it sometime! :)
By the way, you are one of the things that made me happy today. I was browsing through the blogosphere, and thinking about the things I would have missed if I wouldn't have started blogging. You were the first one that popped into my mind! I'm so glad to have got to know you. :) Would you like to start writing e-mails with me, if you have time?
Wow Sagu, you've just made my what? day? week? month? year? life? *biiiig hug*
I am truly touched and please know that I feel the same way about you. There is this little group of blogging girls with whom I have this really great connection, and like you said, it would have been terrible not to start blogging and thus miss out on all the fun with you. :-)
I'd love to be in touch with you through e-mails too! You can write me here:
izar.the.binary.star [@] gmail [.] com
Actually, it's quite opportune, because I wanted to ask you about Sassy Minerals a bit. ;-)
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Lots of love,
Izar
PS: Try the body scrub, try it, try it!! :-D
Happy new year my dear friend! Thanks for a wonderful review thoroughly written and always entertaining and endearing. Sorry that I haven't been able to comment much lately but I do come to visit whenever I can squeeze some time in. 2009 was a real challenging and up and down year as you might gather from changing courses with my career. Don't get me wrong, it has been great but time and energy has become such rare commodities. I'm going on now to read your next post on your reflection on 2009. I wanna know how it went for you etc. so see you in a bit...
btw, check out garden of wisdom. it's wonderful for sourcing specific ingredients for specific skin needs. i haven't had the chance to review the stuff i got yet but i can say that i'm very happy!
xo Grayburn
Yay, hello there Grayburn! :-)))
I haven't exactly been an exemplary blogger last year either, but life always had something in store for me that eventually proved to be too distracting. I guess I should stabilize my life a bit, and then I'll be able to focus on blogging at last.
Yup, GoW is definitely on my list of "Companies to Order From in 2010", but I have yet to wait a bit until I can order anything. ;-)
Love,
Izar
Ever since i saw the lovely photo of the scrub, i've been anxious to get to dm, to buy some lovely Maracuja body oil. Unfortunately i only found the Wild Rose version :( so i decied to also buy a small bottle of orange essential oil. I came home and immediately prepared my scrub : lots of sugar, olive oil, just a little WildRose Oil, lots of orange oil ( cause i hate the olive oil smell, and it did not seem to go away! nasty oil :) ). When i added coffee, i didn't use a spoon, so i kind of dropped a lot of that, and my scrub is very dark , nothing of that caramely shade from your picture, but it smells delicious thanks to the orange oil and the lovely cinnamon. Can't wait to use it in the shower ^_^ Thanks a lot for the recipe.
I do have a question though: why is the shelf life of this only 1-2 weeks? These ingredients, kept separately, in enclosed jars, last a lot longer. Is is the mixing up that shortens it's life?
Hi Ale-m!
Aww, thank you for the feedback! I'm so glad you like it and really hope you'll enjoy using it too. ^_^ Please do let me know how it worked out for you when you've tried it!
To answer your question: your query is a perfectly valid one. One reason for me to suggest only 1-2 weeks is that some water will probably still get into the jar and inevitably make it a breeding ground for germs.
Another is that I was trying to be cautious here and tried to be on the safe side when recommending stuff for my readers. :-)
To tell you the truth, I just made another batch of this today: it's a pretty big one and I'll probably be storing it for much longer than 2 weeks, and it'll probably be as good as new even when I finally manage to use it all up. ;-) So go ahead and fill up a big jar: I'm fairly confident that it won't go bad for a long while. :)
Let me know how you like it, okay? :-)
Oh Izar,
It was the most amazing bath I've had in a while!
Under the hot steaming air in my bath, all those oils just made it heavenly scented, while the scrubby part gave me a good all over massage. I ended heavily moisturized and smelling like orange and coffee. Seems i added lots of that orange oil to conceal the olive smell.
This might be the discovery of the year for me. Thanks a bunch, Izar! Hugs
As for the expiry date , i think it will last a while. In 3 days the smell, texture or color haven't changed at all.
Alem, I'm so happy to hear that! Yay! ^_^ I've always loved this kind of body scrub and the way it moisturizes: I'd gladly use it every morning, but I just don't have the time. It's something I usually indulge in at the weekend and it totally feels like a spa treatment. :-))
I still have some scrub left from two days ago, I haven't even put it in an airtight jar, just a coffee-cup, and it's still perfectly fragrant and lovely to use. ;)
Thanks a bunch for the great feedback!