a moment of calm in the morning

Have you ever made your own face scrub? It’s very easy, smells gorgeous, and is simple to use (even for someone like me, whose normal ‘beauty regime’, if you could call it that, involves a quick rub with a hot flannel).

I’ve not made this for a while, as I acquired a shop bought one a few months back, but that ran out a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been back on the flannel-and-hot-water routine since then. Last night I finally got round to making some more of this, and having used it this morning, I have no idea what took me so long.

It’s vaguely based on a couple of different recipes from The Fragrant Pharmacy, minus ingredients that I either didn’t have (like basil oil), or didn’t want to put in (like cider vinegar – I remember trying that specific recipe at university, making loads of it for economy purposes, and then having to put the whole lot in the bin because I couldn’t stand the smell). I take the same attitude towards this kind of stuff as I do towards cooking, and gardening, and sewing – use what you have, no special trips for fancy ingredients, and if it’s going to cost you an absolute fortune, make it with something else instead.

So here I’ve mixed some ground almonds with a bit of oatmeal, added some sweet almond oil til it all kind of stuck together but wasn’t too sloppy, then put in a couple of drops of lavender essential oil, a drop of tea tree, and a drop of geranium. Oh, and then I remembered that my sister sent me some dried lavender flowers, so I threw a few of those in too.

That little pot, which once held some kind of foundation cream stuff, will probably last about a month, if not longer.

I was trying to work out what it cost to make this, and I’m struggling. The bag of ground almonds originally cost around £1 I think (years ago!), as did the oatmeal. The sweet almond oil was reduced to £2 (although it usually costs about £6 I think). The lavender flowers were free, but I wouldn’t have bought them specially – I’ve made this without before. The essential oils are about £4-6 a bottle each.

So not cheap if you buy everything from scratch – although if you did buy everything from scratch you’d have enough to make enough face scrub to last you, and your entire family, probably about 5 years, so it’s all relative. As it happens, I’ve had those bags of almonds and oatmeal for years, so it’s about time they got used up. Sweet almond oil I generally tend to have around the place, not sure why. I use it neat as a facial moisturiser these days, just a tiny bit on my fingers and rubbed into my face. Lavender oil is handy for everything from smelling nicely relaxing to putting on a burned finger. Tea tree is meant to be good at fighting infections – I sometimes mix it with white vinegar when I’m cleaning. Geranium oil smells good.

If I didn’t already have those ingredients, I would have used something else. Ordinary olive oil instead of the sweet almond oil, perhaps, or even left the oil out altogether and just mixed it with water as I was using it. I suppose you actually don’t need any essential oils at all if all you want is a scrub, although they are lovely to use. And there’s plenty of other things that could make a scrub – the book recommends dried peas… (I had to read that page a few times until I realised it was telling me to grind them…)

I very much like the idea of making cheery toiletries myself from things that are hanging around the house. I’ve made soap before, successfully, and I will do again, but this is an awful lot more simple. I’d like to try shampoo one day, and I’ve heard yogurt is good for your hair too…

Have you ever made your own toiletries? How did it work out?

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