There’s something so rewarding about making your own skin care products. You have total control over the quality of the ingredients that go into your creations, the feel of the product, and the scent of the product (I’m only a control freak when it comes to skin care, I promise!).
I personally love salt body scrubs. If you’ve ever been to my house you know that my shower area is cluttered with jars of scrubs of every description — some store bought, but mostly ones that I’ve made myself. It feels amazing to massage a handful of scrub into your skin after a long day, and the salt scrubs that I make leave my skin both polished and moisturised.
So, why did I make a scrub based on mojitos? Well, because mojitos are just the BOMB!
This particular scrub is super easy to make, even if you’ve never made DIY bath and body products before. Unlike some DIY oil-based scrubs, this one rinses clean because it has a built-in emulsifier.
Ingredients
You should be able to find all of these at your local health food store, or online at stores like Garden of Wisdom Skin Care.
- 10g mango butter (weight 0.35 oz)
- 5g cetyl alcohol (weight 0.18 oz)
- 20g olive oil (weight 0.7 oz)
- 7g avocado oil (weight 0.25 oz)
- 7g pomegranate oil (weight 0.25 oz)
- 10 drops peppermint essential oil
- 10 drops lime essential oil
- 3 drops grapefruit essential oil
- 1g vitamin E 500IU (roughly 2/3 tspn)
- 0.8g Polysorbate 80 (roughly ½ tspn)
- A few drops of optiphen
- 70g salt
Ingredient overview
- Olive, avocado, and pomegranate oils: I’ve chosen these oils for their unique nutrient profiles, and because they are all intensely moisturising (you can use any of your favourite carrier oils here).
- Polysorbate 80: This is our emulsifier, which allows the oils/butters to mix with water. What this means is that when you massage the scrub onto your wet skin, it turns milky and rinses clean.
- Optiphen: This is our (non-paraben) preservative. Because water will inevitably get into your scrub as you use it in the shower, we want something that stops bacteria and mould from growing.
- Salt: I switched to using salt instead of sugar as my exfoliating agent because it’s actually significantly finer in texture and suitable for both limbs and decolette. When I was using sugar it was too rough on the delicate areas of my skin.
There’s a sugar scrub recipe on the DIY section of my blog if any of you are interested called DIY Macadamia Butter and Lemongrass Sugar Scrub
Directions
Measure out non-heat sensitive ingredients first
- Measure out 10g of mango butter, and (approximately) 5g of cetyl alcohol.
- Measure out your oils (in keeping with the spirit of mojitos, I weighed out each oil in a shot glass).
- Add them together in a heat resistant container (I used a sturdy glass tumbler).
Combining your non heat sensitive ingredients
- Gently heat this in a double boiler or a saucepan of water until everything just melts.
- Once everything is melted and mixed together, cool the mixture in the fridge until it goes semi solid.
Final stage — adding heat sensitive ingredients
- Stir the semi solid oil/butter mix and incorporate your essential oils, polysorbate 80, vitamin E and optiphen.
- Add your salt, one tablespoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency. Keep in mind that the scrub will “set” overnight (it will be firmer the next day).
And you’re done! Sit back and pat yourself on the back for creating your own bath and body product.
You can thank me later. 🙂
Oh, wow! Thanks for a nice recipe! That first pic is amazing, I’d really go for a mojito now:)
Haha yes, I think it should be a compulsory part of the recipe that you have a Mojito cocktail at the end 🙂
Where can you get ingredients like cetyl alcohol, Polysorbate 80, and optiphen?
I got those ingredients from Garden of Wisdom (linked above) , which sells DIY formulating supplies like Cetyl Alcohol, Poly80, Optiphen etc, as well as a huge range of oils and butters.
Jen, you freakishly smart mad scientist cat woman! I love your recipe for this. Can you just open up a shop and start selling your stuff to lazy-non-scientist women like me?
Not until you’ve tried this yourself Lilit! It’s seriously easy 🙂
Oh wow, this looks so cool! I can’t wait to try it out!
Let me know how you find it Chris!
Btw, you can easily tweak the ingredients to change the texture of the final product, for example if you want a softer scrub use more oils and less butter etc.
Sick recipe, i’m a sucker for mojitos
I’m a HUGE sucker for mojitos too 🙂
Great work Jen! Your intelligence continually bowls me over. I am not a fan of Mojitos (the drink) but I love the smell so this recipe sounds fab.
xox
Thanks Kimmi, as always you’re too kind. I think the smell of mint and lime is pretty much universally appealing, even without the alcohol
Great Post Jen. Love reading about your latest DIY ventures 🙂
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed this post, you should give this a crack!
Thanks Kimmi, as always you’re too kind. I think the smell of mint and lime is pretty much universally appealing, even without the alcohol 🙂
Thanks for the recipe and posting! I am a Nail Tech and I always look for something new for client specialty pedicures…I will definitely be making this.
That’s great! For hands I might even use a softer butter like Macadamia or Shea, the Mango butter is a little stiffer and better as a body scrub.
Let me know how you find it, salt scrubs are so lovely on hands
Amazing recipe – thank you for sharing this. I could do with a Mojito, but I might just settle for this scrub xx
Kisses, Melanie
Beauty and Bows
Or you can do both! 🙂
Thanks for the recipe! I have a hard time finding salt scrubs in general. Most of the body scrubs these days have sugar and I like the finer texture of salt.
I prefer the texture of salt too. Have fun making this!
Thanks for the great recipe, I feel inspired! I prefer sugar scrubs (it seems I always have some tiny little nick somewhere that stings like crazy when I use salt 🙁 ) but I have “baking sugar”, which is white sugar ground finer for better incorporation into batters and such. I think that will do admirably! 🙂
Glad you liked this recipe Glosslizard! As you’ve noticed, that is the downside of using salt in scrubs- it will sting open cuts. I haven’t noticed this myself, but it can be a problem.
I haven’t used baking sugar before but it sounds like a good idea!
I’ve been using home-made skincare products for 6 years and i have some rematks. You don’t need emulsifiers (like cetyl alcohol) if dou aren’t making an emulsion, i.e. if there’s no liquid in your mix. For the same reason you don’t need any preservatives, if there’s no liquid in your mix, there’s nothing that can go bad.
Thanks for your comment Marina. Cetyl Alcohol is not an emulsifier, it’s in there as an emollient and to make the texture ‘scoopable’. I do, however, often use it as an emulsion stabiliser in my body cream formulations.
I’m adding an emulsifier (polysorbate 80) so that the oil based scrub rinses off easily NOT because the actual scrub requires an emulsifier. I’ve used oil/butter based scrubs without emulsifiers before and I didn’t like how I had to double cleanse to get the scrub off.
The reason I am adding a preservative, as I stated earlier in my post, is because of the shower water that will most likely get into the scrub, NOT because the scrub itself requires it. I do not want mould and bacteria growing if I’m keeping the scrub for over a week.
I hope that makes sense 🙂
Easy, you say? But I only had to look at the ingredients and decide to stick to store bought scrubs! I wish I weren’t so lazy, as it sounds like such a great product! Do you take credit cards? Hehe
Aw Rin, I’m pretty lazy myself so trust me, it’s easy! 🙂 Are you in Australia Rin?
Yep. I’m a Melbourne girl. The only scrub I make is one that I use all up on the day, coconut oil & sugar (if I’m desperate). Recently I got sent the Burt’s Bees sugar scrub to try, so for now I’ll use that… I love body scrubs but seriously, I’m really, really lazy! I would go without before I attempted to buy all those ingredients & mixed it together!
I’ll be moving to Melbs next year, so I’m sure I’ll bump into you at one of the blogger meets there. I’ll be sure to bring some scrub!
Oh, this sounds amazing. Thank you for the great and unique recipe.
Personally, I am a big fan of home made skin care recipes.
It looks really easy, nice work Jenny, really useful. Can’t wait to try it.
Regards
Beauties Factory UK
Glad you liked it Jane, let me know how you go 🙂