{DIY} Making Lemon + Lavender Body Scrub

I have a new obsession: DIY beauty.

When I was in Flagstaff just after Christmas, my best friend showed me how to make lotion bars. I love lotion bars. Since I travel a lot, it's nice to be able to toss a lotion bar into my purse and not have TSA harass me for trying to bring on too many liquids. But I haven't found that many lotions bars I really love, so making my own makes total sense to me.

After we made super yummy and awesome peppermint-scented lotion bars, we tried our hand at whipped body butter. Sadly, this was a fail. The base we used for the lotion had a yucky, overpowering scent. We kept adding more essential oils to counterbalance the smell and in the end it was a hot mess of stinkiness. The consistency was awesome, it just wasn't particularly appealing smell wise.

We tried to make so body scrub bars, but also failed. The ended up being a soft scrub, which I've been using all week, but we were hoping for something more solid, like  bar of soap.

All these fails haven't deterred me one bit. Since getting home, I've been doing a ton of research and am excited to experiment with more DIY beauty recipes. I'm planning on making lip balm this weekend, along with some bath bombs. I can't wait to try out some of the new molds I just bought.

Last week I made some AWESOME lemon and lavender body scrub. I went with lemon since I have about a zillion fresh lemons from my mother-in-law's tree. Plus, I love the bright, fresh smell lemons have so it seems like the perfect morning shower scrub.

Here's the recipe I created for the scrub. For my scrub I used olive oil, but you could use any oil you like ... next time I'm going to use coconut oil. Give it a try. It's super easy and it makes your skin feel so soft and fresh. Everyone in my house has tried it and loves it.

Lemon + Lavender Body Scrub

1 1/2 cups of coarse sea salt

1/2 cup of sugar

4 tbs of oil of choice

Juice of one lemon

Lavender essential oil (I just did a few drops)

1 tbs dry lavender

Directions: Mix the dry ingredients. Add the lemon juice and lavender oil. Mix together. Scoop into tins or mason jars. NOTE: This scrub  was pretty wet because my lemon was super juicy, so I added a little more salt and sugar until I got the consistency I liked.