A body scrub is the one piece of skincare where making it yourself is not a compromise. Three ingredients, one bowl, five minutes, and nothing in it that needs a laboratory.
It is also very hard to get wrong. Too oily, too salty, a bit soft, a bit stiff: all of it still works on your skin. This is a scrub, not a soufflé.
Why salt, and when sugar is easier on you
Salt is coarser than sugar and stays gritty while you work. That makes it right for heels, elbows, knees, and hands that have done something more useful than typing.
Sugar dissolves as it warms, so it eases off halfway through. Gentler and more forgiving, and the better pick for easily irritated skin. There is a sugar scrub in our full DIY list if that sounds more like you.
Salt is not gentle. That is the whole point of it.
What you need
- Two parts fine sea salt. Coarse works too if you are doing feet.
- One part raw Shea butter, soft rather than melted.
- A splash of Baobab oil, or any light oil already in the house.
- A bowl, a fork, and a jar with a lid.
Two spoons of salt to one spoon of Shea butter, near enough. Nothing here needs weighing, and if you want to make a bucket of it, make a bucket of it. As a size to start with, about 80 g salt with 40 g Shea butter and a teaspoon of oil gives you around 120 ml | 4 fl oz, which is enough to find out whether you like the texture.
On the salt: ordinary fine sea salt from the kitchen cupboard is completely fine. If you want the version that also looks good in the photo, we like the fine Atlantic sea salt from Salt'sUp, a salt shop in Tallinn with over sixty salts and peppers on the shelf, shipping worldwide. Their Guérande fine salt is hand harvested and unrefined, a fitting partner for unrefined Shea butter. Two things nobody bleached.
How to make it
- Soften the Shea butter. A warm room for an hour does it, or work it between your palms. It does not need to melt, and a bit of gentle warmth is plenty.
- Mash it smooth with a fork. Lumps are cosmetic, so chase them or leave them.
- Add the Baobab oil and stir until it looks like soft frosting.
- Fold in the salt in two goes. Folding keeps the crystals whole, which is the grit you came for. If a few dissolve, nothing is ruined.
- Spoon it into a dry jar. Press it down and put the lid on.
Add a few drops of essential oil at the end if you want it scented, and leave citrus oils out of it if you are heading into the sun afterwards.
If it comes out oilier than you expected, stir in more salt. If it comes out dry, another splash of oil. It behaves.
How to use it
Warm your skin first, then turn the water off. Take a scoop, work in circles for a minute or so, and give the rough spots more time. Rinse warm and pat dry. There is enough Shea butter in it that you may not need anything else afterwards, which is the part people find suspicious until they try it.
One real warning. Oil on a tiled floor is slippery. Hold on to something, and rinse the shower down when you are done.
Once or twice a week is plenty. Keep it off your face, off freshly shaved skin, and off anything sore or sunburnt.
Three variations, same bowl
- Foot scrub. Coarse salt, half the oil. Follow it with plain Shea butter and a pair of socks overnight.
- Pre-wash scalp scrub. Half the salt, double the Baobab oil, worked along the parting before you shampoo. Baobab oil is non-comedogenic and light enough not to weigh hair down.
- Bath soak. Two spoons under running water. The salt dissolves, the Shea butter does not, and it will leave a ring on the tub. Worth it, and now you know.
Four small things worth knowing
- Keep water out of the jar. There is no water in the recipe, so wet fingers are the only thing that will spoil it. A small dry spoon solves it for good.
- Grainy Shea butter happens when it gets too hot and cools slowly. It is harmless, and if the texture bothers you, here is why it happens and how to fix it.
- Not the bathroom windowsill. Heat and light are the two things Shea butter dislikes. A cupboard keeps it happy.
- It keeps for a long time. Raw Shea butter does not spoil the way food does. After about two years, it can slowly start losing some of its skin-loving benefits, but that does not mean it has gone bad. It will still moisturize your skin for years.
Where to keep it
Any clean jar with a lid works, and a screw-top jam jar has held more homemade scrub than every container ever sold for the purpose. Make as much as you like and keep it in whatever you already own.
Two things worth knowing before you pick one. Glass and a tiled shower floor have an argument coming, and the tiles always win. Plastic survives that, and it is the one material in your bathroom with no good ending, because it comes back as something worse every time it is recycled.
Metal is the quiet winner. It recycles endlessly with no loss, it does not shatter, and it keeps light out. Any tin will do. Ours is an empty metal tin 120 ml | 4 fl oz, it comes empty on purpose, and it takes about one batch of this size. It is an option, not part of the recipe, and the pouch works perfectly well on its own.
Why raw Shea butter for this
Refining strips Shea butter down to something pale and odourless, and takes most of what makes it worth using along with it. Raw, unrefined Shea butter is rich in oleic and stearic fatty acids and naturally contains vitamins A and E. It smells faintly nutty and smoky, because it was made over a wood fire by the women in our cooperative in Northern Ghana, and that smell is the receipt.
Baobab oil works from the other direction: cold-pressed, high in omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids with some omega-3, natural tocopherols, and light enough to sink in fast.
If you make things at home, buy the oil in a size that survives it. The Shea butter 450 g | 16 oz and Baobab oil 210 ml | 7.1 fl oz set is the pair we reach for: one pouch of Shea butter covers about eleven batches of this size with plenty left over, and the bigger bottle costs far less per millilitre than a small one, which matters once you start using the oil for everything else too.
Buying in the United States? Everything is on our Amazon store. Anywhere else, start at linktr.ee/fairtaleghana.
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