How to Make a Sugar Scrub for a Fast & Useful Stitcher’s Gift

Rough, dry skin is the bane of many stitchers. It can snag delicate threads, especially silk, and make your stitching harder than it should be. Sugar scrubs soften hands while they exfoliate the dry skin, making them wonderful for stitchers.

If you do searches for scrub recipes, you will find ones for both salt scrubs and lemon scrubs. Because salt and lemon juice both can irritate any cuts you might have on your hands, I don’t recommend them. Look for a scrub that uses sugar instead of salt and oil or Dawn dishwashing detergent.

It can be hard to find sugar scrubs in shops, but it’s incredibly easy to make your own. The easiest way is to combine oil or dawn dishwashing liquid, sugar, and a few drops of an essential oil you like.

For oils pick one that has no smell. Olive oil is best but smell it first. Coconut oil is another great choice.

Essential oils are very powerful, you can often find them in drugstores, stores with homeopathic remedies and sometimes in craft stores. Not all fragrant oils are essential oils. Essential oils are purely the scent.

An unlikely place to find some essential oils is high-end cooking shops. Citrus oils especially are used widely in cooking.

Once your scrub is made, package it in a glass jar. Reuse clean jars that you have or buy wide-mouth Mason jars. A wide opening is needed so you can get your hands down in there.

To give as a gift, label it, add a pretty ribbon and a tag with instructions.

Here are three great recipes.

Whole New Mom has a wonderful recipe for a sugar scrub on her blog.About.com has a great generalized scrub recipe that will allow you to customize it to your likes. You can cut the ingredients down even more by making the Cowgill’s Sugar Scrub using Dawn’s Olay dishwashing liquid along with the sugar.

And a big Thank You to my friend & fellow stitcher Debbie who made some of The Cowgill’s Scrub for me.