Christmas Gift Ideas: Homemade Sugar Scrub Recipe

This recipe for homemade orange sugar scrub is one of those great do-it-yourself Christmas gift ideas that stretches a long way for gifts. Each batch can make as many or as few as you need at the time just by measuring out the right amount of sugar and scented oil depending on the number of jars or containers you have.

Homemade Sweet Orange Sugar Scrub

Sugar Scrub Ingredients:
Plain white sugar
Oil (I recommend a very light oil such as sweet almond oil, avocado oil etc found in any health shop)
Essential oil (any one or more scents will do, I used Sweet Orange)
Food colouring (optional)

Jar ingredients:
Small jar (I found mine - bead storage jars at Spotlight for $2 each)
Christmassy fabric (I bought 2 different Fat 1/4's)
Mod Podge (my new best friend)

Decorating the jar

Take your jar and draw a wide circle around it, large enough so that when you turn the fabric inside the lid there will be enough of a turnover

Make slits at regular intervals all the way round

Take your Mod Podge (this is my favourite part!) and a small brush and paint the top of the lid. Fix the lid upside down in the centre of the cut fabric.

Paint Mod Podge all round the outside rim and inside rim and fix down each portion of slitted fabric onto the lid. Continue all the way round until the whole lid is fixed down. 

With your finger, smooth away all excess Mod Podge as you go which will help the slits on the sides of the lid sit nicely.

Now go over the whole fabric again with the Mod Podge, smoothing away excess as you go.

Once this dries you will have a lovely hard and glossy finish on the lid.

Create a label and Mod Podge the label onto the jar. 

Making the scrub
Take the jar or jars you want to fill and measure out the equivalent amount of sugar into them that you will want in the finished jar. I made five jars at a time.

Gradually add sufficient oil (try adding 1/2 cup to start, then 1/4 cup at a time after that) to make the mixture go all fluffy and then test the consistency by rubbing some on your hand. You want it to make your hand feel smooth after washing off, but not still all oily. I learnt the hard way by following a 1:1 ratio and using olive oil for my first batch, and not only was it way too much oil, the olive oil is too heavy an oil to use as it just sinks to the bottom of the container.

Once you are happy with the consistency, add enough drops of essential oil to give the mixture a really nice scent. I think I added about 30 drops of Sweet Orange for my large batch.

If you want to make the mixture look a little like the scent, add a couple of drops of food colouring - I added a couple of red and yellow to give a soft orange colour.

Pack into your prepared jars. Keep mixing the mixture as you go to prevent the oil from settling at the bottom.

Seal all the containers, and then open a couple of hours later just to check that they all still smell as good as you remember..

And you may even find you contemplate keeping one for yourself they smell so lush!

Be sure to check out some of my other great Christmas gift ideas: 

Cinnamon Scented Candles
Cookies in a Jar
Chocolate Lip Gloss
Fizzy Bath Bombs
Giant Hanging Snowflakes
Christmas Tinsel Wreath
NOEL Word Block Wall Art