There’s nothing like a body scrub to keep your skin smooth and soft. There also the added bonus in exfoliating that it helps to keep your carefully shaved/plucked/waxed body parts from developing annoying little ingrown hairs. That said, if you’re a fan of liberally applying your scrub to buff away then getting through a jar can be quick work–and can start adding up

My personal favourite kinds of body scrub are sugar scrubs, so imagine my delight when I realised I could make a great big pot of it for pence, compared to the £5 and up a jar it costs in store.

It’s incredibly easy and takes only a couple of minutes, and you can make your scrub as basic of luxurious as you want

Starting out you will of course need a bag of sugar; I use caster. For the oil you can either use baby oil or olive oil. Finally, for a basic pot, you will actually need a pot. You can either buy a regular twist top jam jar or a fancier lever-seal top jar, both of which will be available online or at your local homeward store, if not your local super market. If you want to get really thrifty, you can reuse any large pots you might have emptied from your beauty store in the past, whether a large moisturiser pot, intensive condition pot, or maybe the container from the last scrub you emptied. As long as it’s big enough to hold enough scrub for several applications and seals securely, you’re good to go.

The amount of sugar and oil you need depends on the size of the container you’re filling, and this isn’t a rocket science issue, so a specific quantity recipe isn’t needed here. All you really need to do is fill your container almost full with sugar, pour that sugar into a mixing bowl, then add your oil of choice in a generous glob. It’s probably going to take more than you think, but you don’t want to drown the sugar or else your mixture will end up too wet and you’ll have to way more sugar to balance it out. Add oil in smaller doses the first time around while you get used to the quantities, stirring with a spoon to help get all the dry sugar up from the bottom of your pot. If you didn’t quite full your container totally with sugar at first then you’ll have a little wiggle room to add extra sugar to the mixture to soak up excess oil if you got a little heavy handed with it at first.

As I said, oil and sugar is the basic mix, but adding lemon juice is a great way to liven up the scent, as well as being beneficial for your skin. When it comes to the scent you can get as creative as you want, adding vanilla essence, peppermint, orange essence–whatever you want. I also like to add an opened bag of tea leaves to my scrubs for the antioxidant properties and the look it gives the scrub having the darker flecks. Adding fruit teas will not only give you another layer to your scent but will also give your scrub a slight colour. I like adding cranberry and raspberry fruit tea leaves because it turns my scrub a soft pink and smells yummy.

Add the tea leaves, lemon juice, and essence of choice to the mixture before you add the oil (though it doesn’t matter a huge amount.)

Transfer your scrub into your container, seal it up tight, and voila! A gorgeous scented body scrub for up to a tenth of the price of a jar bought in store. If you’re giving away jars as gifts, or just like a little luxury yourself in your pamper time, add a pretty bow to lid of your jar to finish it off nicely.

Now go buff yourself to a rosy glow!