Today we’re stirring up a lovely Sea Glass Salt Scrub, made with a sparkling blend of salts and a beautiful fragrance. It’s a brilliant and beautiful body scrub, and you can easily customize it to use whatever salts you have on hand. You don’t need any heat, either, so you can whip up a batch in just a few moments. Let’s dive in!

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The salt blend for this scrub was inspired by sea glass; the lovely rounded-down, frosted bits of colourful glass that can be found on beaches—the result of bits of glass being weathered by the sea. Sparkly Epsom salts, fine sea salt, and beautiful Himalayan pink sea salt mingle to create a beautiful look and a wonderful scrubby base!

This formulation features several ingredients from Bramble Berry’s brand new “Salt of the Earth” collection (gifted).

The salt blend is moistened with a simple blend of fractionated coconut oil and Polysorbate 80. I chose fractionated coconut oil because it’s inexpensive and clear (rather than yellow, which would shift the appearance of the scrub a bit), and Polysorbate 80 to allow the oil to solubilize into your bathwater. This means your bathwater becomes all silky and rich after you’re done scrubbing yourself, and your tub doesn’t get all kinds of slippery and dangerous when you drain the water post-soak.

When you’re formulating a salt scrub, one of the things you need to decide is how “wet” you want it to be; how much oil and how much salt. If you use lots of oil you’ll have a wetter, richer scrub that’ll settle noticeably when it sits and will need to be stirred before using. If you use less oil and more salt you’ll have a drier, sandier scrub. It’s all personal preference, and you can easily tweak the formulation to suit your preferences!

For this formulation, I aimed for a roughly even mix; just enough of each that we don’t get too much oil pooling on the top of the salts. I experimented with different salts and different ratios and generally found 70–75% salts with 25–30% oil worked well, though using different grain sizes of salts will slightly shift how much of each part you’ll need.

I selected Brambleberry’s new Driftwood and Amber fragrance oil—it’s warm and beguiling, with fantastic depth. You can certainly choose something else, but if you like rich, intriguing scents I think you might like this one! They also have a Frosted Sea Glass fragrance oil that would be brilliant (and perhaps a more apt choice… but I really wanted to use the Driftwood + Amber one!).

Relevant links & further reading

• Fractionated coconut oil in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Polysorbate 80 in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Facial scrub/exfoliant formulations
  • Winter Solstice Facial Polish
  • Creamy French Green Clay Face Mask
  • Chocolate Cherry Face Mask
  • Calendula Rose Foaming Cleansing Powder
  • Fizzy Foaming Face Scrub

The finished scrub is a lovely skin treat; perfect for buffing away dead skin and amping up the self-care awesomeness of your bath. Enjoy!

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Sea Glass Salt Scrub

144g | 36% fine Epsom salts
64g | 16% medium pink Himalayan salt
92g | 23% fine sea salt (USA / Canada)
28g | 7% Polysorbate 80 (USA / Canada)
70g | 17.5% fractionated coconut oil
0.8g | 0.2% Driftwood and Amber fragrance oil
1.2g | 0.3% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)

Weigh all the ingredients into a bowl or heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Stir to combine, and that’s it!

Transfer the mixture to a jar; I used a 250g clear screw-top jar from YellowBee and this 400g batch fit perfectly.

To use, portion out a small amount of scrub into a shower-safe container, and take that container into the shower or bath with you. Massage small amounts of the scrub into your skin (not your face!) and rinse off. Enjoy your lovely soft, exfoliated skin!

Shelf Life & Storage

Because this scrub does not contain any water, it does not require a broad-spectrum preservative (broad spectrum preservatives ward off microbial growth, and microbes require water to live—no water, no microbes!). Bare sure to keep it dry to ensure it lasts as long as possible—don’t let any water get into the container and it should easily last a year. If you are not adding a preservative you must portion out the amount you want to use into a small shower-safe container for use so you are never taking the master batch into the bath/shower, where it is very likely to become contaminated with water as you’ll be dipping into it with wet hands. If you plan on giving this scrub away or taking it into the shower/bath with you, please include 1% phenonip (USA | Canada)—phenonip is an oil-soluble broad spectrum preservative, so it will work to protect this 100% oil-based concoction.

Substitutions

As always, be aware that making substitutions will change the final product. While these swaps won’t break the recipe, you will get a different final product than I did.

• As I’ve provided this recipe in percentages as well as grams you can easily calculate it to any size using a simple spreadsheet as I’ve explained in this post. As written in grams this recipe will make 400g batch, which will fill a 250g jar well.
• To learn more about the ingredients used in this formulation, including why they’re included and what you can substitute them with, please visit the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia. It doesn’t have everything in it yet, but there’s lots of good information there! If I have not given a specific substitution suggestion in this list (Polysorbate 80) please look up the ingredient in the encyclopedia before asking.
• You could play with different salt blends, keeping in mind that different grain sizes of salt will impact the formulation.
• You can substitute another lightweight oil like sweet almond, grapeseed, or sunflower seed instead of fractionated coconut oil.
• You could use a different fragrance oil.
• If you’d like to incorporate an essential oil, please read this.