Handmade Christmas: Lemon Body Scrub

Earlier this month I told you that I was planning on making a number of our Christmas gifts this year. Now that some of those gifts have been given, I can share the stories.

I always start with a clean kitchen, so I've got room to manoeuvre, and I prefer to have a sink full of hot, soapy water, so I can clean and reuse utensils as I go. In this case, I also had a number of brand-new containers to clean, so this is how I began.

And more containers . . .

Finally, I was ready for the fun part!

Three ingredients:

5 Tablespoons sea salt
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 fresh lemon

I think I can handle this.

According to the instructions I followed, from the Beauty Department blog, coating the salt with the olive oil prevents the salt from dissolving in the watery lemon juice. Seems reasonable to me. So I dutifully combined the salt and olive oil first.

So far, so good. Time to add the lemon.

I added some of the lemon rind as well.

It was looking too watery to me, so, in a fresh bowl, I mixed up another 2 tablespoons of salt and 1 teaspoon olive oil, and added it to the watery mixture. Here's what it looked like after that.

What it looked like when I first put it in the jar.

But when it settled down, it only half-filled the bottle, so I made a second batch. And here's what a double batch looked like.

sunshine in a bottle

Time for round two. This time, knowing that it would take a double batch, I started with10 Tablespoons of salt and two tablespoons of oil.

A gratuitous picture, just because I think lemons are so pretty.

My hands were getting sore from squeezing the lemons, so I called in some reinforcements.

I love his hands.

Things seemed to be going fairly well, except that the mixture seemed more watery than the previous batch.

And it didn't have as much volume.

I realized I had reused my mixing bowl without rinsing out the lemon juice first, so the oil didn't coat the salt properly.

I mixed up more salt and oil, and added it to the second jar. Everything evened up.

The final product: Lemon Body Scrub

 Except for a couple of hiccups, I consider this a success!

The approximate cost for each jar was $5.00, including the jars themselves (they were sold as "large spice jars" at Loblaws). I did not keep track of how much time I spent because I also paused frequently to take pictures.

I would definitely do this one again.


To read more in this series, visit my Handmade Christmas page.

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