It was only a matter of time before I found new ways to enjoy my Lush products. Now that I have tried pretty much everything that Lush are currently offering in their shops and I'm on top of my Lush Kitchen orders, I have a little spare time to experiment and convert my favourite Lush products into other formats.
As I've made multiple shower gels, I felt it was time to branch out and try my hand at something else. As somebody who doesn't use that much soap, I seem to have an impressive surplus of the stuff hanging around, collecting dust. So why not transform this abandoned format into something a little more exciting? The All Things Lush UK DIY Sugar Scrub has been born.
Video:
Review:
What you'll need:
-A Bowl
-A Spoon
-1-2 empty plastic tubs
-A cheese grater
-A blender
-100g of Rock Star Soap
-1 Cup (250g) sugar
-85g Solid Coconut Oil
Begin by grating the whole block of soap with the biggest grater you can find. The blender will do most of the work at breaking the soap down so you don't have to worry about using the smallest setting on the grater. In fact, this will probably prove to be rather problematic and you may end up with most of the soap stuck in the grates if you do this!
Once this has been done, add the sugar, coconut oil and grated soap into the blender. Depending on what sort of consistency you want, you will need to pick the right sort of sugar to match this. I find that white, granulated sugar works best for those who want an average exfoliator - one that isn't really harsh on the skin but one that will equally scrub away dry skin effectively.
White sugar also works really well with the sweet and fruity scented soaps, while brown sugar would be more suited for soaps such as Yog Nog, Porridge and any other that has a creamy smell and texture to compliment the caramelised fragrance of the sugar. It's worth experimenting to see which works best for you, and you may even opt to remove sugar altogether and replace it with salt - something I will blog about very soon!
Blend all of the ingredients together, stopping every minute to give the mixture a good stir. You'll need to do this 3-4 times or until you notice that there is no longer any excess sugar up the sides of the blender. I would recommend that you use a blender like the one in my video as it's perfect for combining the ingredients together, whereas a smoothie maker-type blender won't do this as effectively.
Spoon the mixture into the tubs and it's ready to use! It's that simple!
You may find that the coconut oil comes through quite a bit when you've first transferred it into the tubs, but this subsides slightly and becomes a sweet, wholesome base note that compliments the scent of the Rock Star perfectly. It also works as a great moisturiser in the shower, so while the sugar is exfoliating your skin and the soap is cleaning it, the coconut oil will help to replenish the body with essential oils and leave it feeling super soft.
In regards to the coconut oil, I would only use this for very sweet scented soaps. Products such as Rock Star, The Godmother and Honey I Washed The Kids are perfect for this as the coconut compliments the candy element of each one. However, most other soaps would probably benefit from using almond oil or something less dominating instead. This is something I plan to test out in the next week or so and I'll reveal the outcome afterwards.
To use Rock Star Sugar Scrub, take a tiny amount of the product and expose it to the smallest amount of water. Massage it on the area of skin you want to soften and you'll see that it lathers up like a soap but offers a gentle but rough texture to scrub away unwanted dirt and debris.
My flatmates have been fighting over this all week and they all agree that it's as good as any one of Lush's regular scrubs. One in particular, claimed that it completely rid him of the itchy, dry and rather irritated areas that he had developed on his legs and had been trying to remove for the past couple of months. Result!
I would love to know if any of you plan on making this. Please send me pictures and links to your experiments, and for those planning on trying this out, good luck and enjoy!
