Scrubbed

It's the weekend before Christmas, and I finally got around to doing the body scrub set I've been planning to give my girl friends this Christmas.

I got a bunch of banig boxes (for free!!!) last September -- they were supposed to be used for our company anniversary party invitations, but the supplier gave only half of our orders, so we used sinamay bags instead, and we were left with a couple of banig boxes for nothing. Thinking ahead that I could use those boxes for something come Christmas, I asked my committee leader if I could have a couple (meaning around 40 boxes) for me to take home, and she agreed, so yippee!

Body scrubs are relatively easy to make: one only needed a granular exfoliant element, a moisturizing element, and a scent for aromatherapy effects.

And last weekend, I concocted up three variants of body scrubs: brown sugar body scrub, an oatmeal body scrub, and a coffee body scrub. I then used olive oil as the moisturizing element in the body scrubs.

The basic recipe is 1:4 ratio of oil to exfoliant. If you think the mixture is too "granular" then go ahead and add more oil.

For the scents, since I wasn't able to find cinnamon and lavender extracts or essential oils, I bought scented massage oil from Zen Zest. Peppermint for the coffee scrub (ala Starbucks peppermint coffee drinks! Hehe), and lavender for the oatmeal scrub. I was able to find vanilla extract at the supermarket, so that went into the brown sugar scrub.

Then I did a little Photoshop-ping to create the tags with the name of the body scrub and the instructions for use. Used left-over red crochet thread to tie up the tags.

Each banig box contained a brown sugar scrub, an oatmeal scrub and a coffee scrub. I had leftover pink scraps from a skirt I ripped up a few months ago and used that as "bedding" for the scrub bottles. I didn't want my bottles rolling around helplessly inside the banig box.

I made 16 sets all in all -- gifts for my girl office mates, college buddies and some relatives.

I was kind of worried that costs for the scrubs would amount to 100 pesos per set, but I think I overestimated. I only used half of the oats, coffee and brown sugar I bought, and about a fourth of the bottle of massage oils I bought for Zen Zest. Bottles were bought at Tabora in Divisoria for 10 pesos per piece. And since the banig boxes were free, I think I was able to do it at less than 50 pesos per set :)

The finished scrubbed products.

Haay... I'm all scrubbed out! Toodles!