It’s time to step up your beauty game for winter, so naturally, the first thing you should do to prep is…raid your pantry! No joke—pantry essentials like oils and sugar are key to natural exfoliating. We showed you how to use these ingredients to create face scrubs to suit your skin type, and now were tackling chapped lips with these six DIY sugar scrubs.
We used two bases to create our scrubs. Each has extra virgin coconut oil—an amazing natural moisturizer that’s loaded with antioxidants—and either brown sugar or cane sugar as the exfoliants. The cane sugar was finer, resulting in a more gentle scrub. While we recommend one or the other in our recipes, be sure to use whatever type is best for your lips.
Adding the rest of the ingredients is up to you—or really, up to your pantry! Since we’re stocking up on spices and other flavor enhancers for holiday baking, now is the perfect time to get creative with festive combos. And once these scrubs are jarred, they’d make perfect stocking stuffers or white elephant gifts. So pucker up!
Ingredients:
– brown or white sugar
– extra virgin coconut oil
– chopped herbs and fruits of your choice
– flavor extracts and spices of your choice
Instructions:
1. Choose your container, and measure your exfoliant so that the container is just about half full.
2. Measure the coconut oil—you want a 1:1 ratio of oil to sugar.
3. Transfer oil and sugar to a mixing bowl, then add the chopped herbs and fruits, followed by flavor extracts and spices of your choice. Add each of these “to taste.”
4. Mix gently to combine—over-mixing will make the granules begin to dissolve.
5. Add scrub to an air-tight storage container and refrigerate for up to two weeks. Remove from fridge at least five minutes before use so that the mixture can soften.
Our first lip scrub combines white sugar, fresh rosemary, and a few drops of peppermint extract. The minty bite of peppermint not only cools your lips as you exfoliate, but helps to freshen your breath, too!
Be sure to chop the fresh rosemary to bits before you add it to the bowl. When you mix, use more of a folding motion than a stir so that you don’t dissolve the sugar. Your lips would be so sad!
This sugar lip scrub was inspired by the fragrant clove-studded oranges that everyone makes for their trees around Christmastime. We have to say, the combo of orange, clove, and honey is a winner in the beauty department too!
Use about the same amount of hydrating honey and freshly squeezed, vitamin-packed orange juice for this recipe. Then finish with a light dusting of potent ground clove and orange zest. As soon as you start mixing, you can smell the ingredients at work. This just might be our favorite of the bunch!
The final white sugar scrub will please flavor purists—the only add in is spicy cinnamon.
Mix and mash—it’s really that simple! Be sure to transfer to an air-tight container and store in the fridge between uses.
Not only is pumpkin an ingredient of choice this time of year, it has a ton of amazing moisturizing properties, like skin-soothing vitamin E. We couldn’t resist indulging in the spirit of the season by topping this brown sugar scrub with freshly grated nutmeg.
While all of our other sugar scrub recipes call for an equal ratio of coconut oil to sugar, sub in one scoop of pumpkin puree for coconut oil in this batch. The resulting scrub tastes like the beginnings of a killer pumpkin pie (yes, we might have licked our lips while testing this one).
If honey is totally OK to use in sugar lip scrubs, then you can definitely use equally sticky and equally delicious maple syrup, right? Right! Here’s how:
The combo of brown sugar, rich maple syrup, and a dash sweet almond flavor smells so comforting. Like you can close your eyes and imagine your mom cooking pancakes on Christmas morning. And let’s be real, you can totally whip up a fall-flavored batch with most of the ingredients in this post!
For the last sugar scrub, we made a brown sugar concoction using vanilla extract and chopped dried cranberries, because, why not?
This classic winter flavor combo is so satisfying. The tart cranberries and warm vanilla flavors mix the more you scrub your lips. If that’s not great motivation to get silky smooth lips, we don’t know what is!
Be sure to top your finished scrubs with garnishes that indicate what’s inside, like a small sprig of rosemary or a dusting of freshly grated nutmeg. It was so fun to make a mix of sweet and fresh flavors that evoke the scents of the holidays. On that note, wouldn’t these little jars make the perfect stocking stuffers?
If you want to dress them up for gift giving, you can always label their main ingredients and tie it onto the jar with festive embroidery floss. We used colors that matched our ingredients, like a muted orange string for the pumpkin spice scrub and bright green string for the rosemary and peppermint one.
Once their lids are on, they’re ready to bestow holiday cheer to your beauty buff besties! Just be sure to tell the lucky recipients to store them in the fridge in between uses.
What other DIY beauty products have you made at home? What are your favorite natural ingredients to use in skincare products? Talk to us in the comments below!
