Sea salt and coconut oil goodness for your skin.
Think, “coconut,” and immediately the image of Waikiki dancers hamming it up on the beach (coconut shell bikinis, anyone?) and cocktails with umbrella toothpicks comes into mind. Oh yes, who can forget the many smiles you chance upon, the melody of the ukulele and the smell of the sea?
But coconuts are also Mother Nature’s way of showing her love for us. Coconut oil has many great benefits towards our well-being, such as strengthening our hair and giving it a glow, or moisturising our skin. Today I’ll show you how to make a sea salt and coconut oil face scrub. It’s really easy, you’ll learn it in no time!
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Things you’ll need:
Things you need: A jar, sea salt, coconut oil and measuring cups.
There are essentially four basic things you need to make this very simple scrub:
- An air-tight jar to store your scrub in
- Sea salt, finely milled
- Coconut oil, melted
- Measuring cups
The air tight jar isn’t very expensive. I got mine from IKEA at only S$1.90. It was the smallest size they had, otherwise I would have gotten a smaller one. If I remember correctly, this one was about 0.5L in capacity, which is a lot for a scrub!
I’d specially bought the coconut oil and sea salt from Pasarbella, a local (not really) farmer’s market, for the scrub. The Mekhala Himalayan Pink Salt (Fine Grain) is pure, hand-mined and derived from ancient sea salt deposits. Fine grain is better than coarse grain for a face scrub, whereas coarse grain can also be used for exfoliating the body or feet. I also prefer pink salts to normal white ones because I love the colour pink! The coconut oil from The Organic Grocer at the market is 100% natural and great for the skin. If you can find an oil that’s extra virgin, that would be good too.
Here is what you do:
Step 1: Add salt.
After sterilising the jar and making sure it’s completely dry on the inside, add in a certain amount of salt. I started off with 1/2 cup.
Step 2: Add oil.
Next, add half that amount of oil into the jar. The ratio of salt:oil should stick to 2:1. So for this time, I used 1/4 cup of coconut oil.
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Step 3: Mix!
Then comes the fun part, where you mix them together! After mixing, let the mixture set for a while, close the jar and place it in the refrigerator till it gets cool, and store it there.
If you like, you can mix in about 5 drops of essential oil before storing it away. In addition, if you find you have more space in your jar, you can add more salt and oil again. For me, I used about a total of 1 cup of salt and 1/2 cup of oil. Once the mixture has settled and is cooled, it will look less pink (if you’re using pink salt) and more creamy. The reason the scrub looks whitish is due to the coconut oil solidifying at lower temperatures. Don’t worry though, as the oil will melt again when it reaches room temperature, or touches the warmth of your skin.
Just after mixing (left) and after being cooled in the fridge (right).
You can vary the type of scrub you want by changing the ingredients in the scrub. This is just a very basic recipe with the key point being the 2:1 ratio for salt:oil.
I’ve made another coffee scrub, and you can find the recipe for that one here. It uses real coffee beans that you have to grind on your own, or you can even just get ground coffee powder straight away from your local barista. As with this sea salt scrub, all the ingredients are natural, and it also smells heavenly.
Stay buffed,
Roxanne
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