Christmas body scrub with orange and cinnamon

For many people, Christmas is the best time of the year! Everything around us is colorful and bright! One way to make these days more joyful is definitely to give something to our friends and family! But how to surprise them? For a really original idea, we should avoid queues and “standard” gifts and have fun, instead, preparing our presents at home! It doesn’t matter if they won’t be perfect, the thing that will make them really special and unique is having them made with our hands! In this article, I will show you how to prepare a Christmas body scrub with orange and cinnamon! A simple Christmas gift idea perfect for her and him!

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Gabi

How do you make your own scrub?

Exfoliation is an important step in skincare. According to the part of our body, we have to select exfoliants with different strengths. If you want to know more about it, I recommend you to read my blog post about exfoliants. Check it out here.

For this recipe, I decided to mix two types of exfoliants to create a perfect Christmas body scrub for dry skin. Let’s see in detail our exfoliants.

DIY Sugar Scrub

Sugar is the most used exfoliants in DIY scrubs because it is cheap and easy to find at home. These conditions together with its exfoliating properties make it ideal for creating at home, body scrubs in a few minutes. In this recipe, sugar will be the main ingredient to which I will add a second exfoliant more “intense” for the drier parts of the body.

DIY Scrub with orange peels

For this Christmas body scrub with orange and cinnamon, I thought of including orange peels as an exfoliant. I have been drying orange peels for a while instead of throwing them away. I like the idea of creating something special and unique with something simple and orange peels really lend themselves to a lot of creative ideas. So as Christmas approached, I took my jar with dried peels back and used them to create this orange and cinnamon body scrub. Orange peels are significantly harder than sugar crystals. For this reason, they are ideal for exfoliating particularly dry body parts such as legs and elbows. We, therefore, avoid using them for more delicate parts of the body such as the face and lips.

Christmas body scrub with orange and cinnamon | What you will need

Creating body scrub is really easy and doesn’t require a lot of time. We will need:

• 4 tablespoons of white Sugar
• 2 tablespoons of dried, and ground down fine orange peels
• 2 tablespoons of Coconut oil
• half a teaspoon of Cinnamon powder
• a few drops of Orange essential oil

Christmas body scrub with orange and cinnamon |Procedure

To make this scrub, we will have to start eating oranges and put the peels aside. To dry them better, I removed the white inner part of the peel and let them dry over time. Placing them on a sunlit windowsill will accelerate the process.

Once dried, let’s place them in a blender and mix them until a fine powder is obtained. When we have obtained a homogeneous powder, just take two tablespoons of orange peels powder and combine them with four of granulated sugar. We mix the two ingredients and combine them with two tablespoons of coconut oil. Coconut oil can be easily replaced with sweet almond oil, jojoba (for more delicate skin), or sunflower oil for normal skin.

The natural orange scent given by the peels may not be strong enough. For this reason, we can add a few drops of orange essential oil to help enhance the presence of the orange. Finally, add half a teaspoon of cinnamon, and our orange and cinnamon body scrub is ready!

Christmas body scrub with orange and cinnamon |Video Tutorial

If you really like the idea of DIY but due to lack of time you cannot make your gifts in the short term, there is a simple solution. Check out my post on sustainable handmade gifts that can be found on Etsy. A platform that allows small artisans to sell their unique creations! Etsy provides a great variety of products for many categories, Home & Living, Jewellery & Accessories, Craft Supplies & Tools, and much more! You just have to click on a link and have fun, looking for what you like best! Check it out here.

Shelf life of do-it-yourself products

Creating a body scrub takes a few steps and little time, but how long can we use it for? If we wanted to give it as a gift for some special occasion, what shelf life date should we recommend?

Unfortunately, creating homemade products has as a downside the impossibility of defining a shelf life with certainty. This is because this information is the result of various studies conducted in laboratories that allow defining a time of use within which the consumer will find the characteristics of the product intact without any proliferation of germs. In homemade products, it is difficult to conduct laboratory tests and consequently assign a shelf life. To overcome this problem we will have to consider some product characteristics such as the presence or absence of water and preservatives.

Christmas body scrub with orange and cinnamon | Shelf life

Both water and preservatives are absent in this scrub. Neither water is used, which is a perfect medium for germ proliferation, but neither are preservatives that would prevent their possible proliferation.

So what to do?

We have to consider that although there is no water inside the scrub, it could easily get inside if used in the shower or if we were to introduce wet fingers inside it. Since it contains no preservatives, we do not give the scrub any protection against the proliferation of germs and mold. To avoid this, it is best to use the scrub during a short period of time taking care to observe its characteristics, such as smell and appearance, before each use. In case a change in such characteristics is observed it is better to avoid its use and create a new one.

HEY BEFORE YOU GO.. Don’t miss my FREE DIY Natural Skincare challenge! Make an entire morning routine with only a few ingredients!!

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Gabi