On a recent work trip to the States, Himself very thoughtfully sought out a few hard-to-get-this-side-of-the-pond beauty bits to bring home to me. One of them was a little tub of Fresh Brown Sugar Body Polish, which scooped best body scrub in US InStyle's Best Beauty Buys 2011 and has long been a cult and 'sleb favourite. No wonder it has such an easy time winning over fans: this stuff does exactly what it says on the tub and is flippin' gorgeous to boot.
As brown sugar buffs away dry skin cells, a blend of evening primrose, sweet almond, apricot kernel, and jojoba oils nourish and deeply moisturise, while skin brightening citrus oils provide a sharp, uplifting fragrance.
Never has exfoliating felt like such a treat.
I've been using it very sparingly of late as it's nearly gone, so I was delighted to hear that there is a Fresh store in London where I could replenish my stocks; I was less delighted to hear that to do so would set me back £47 of the Queen's finest. So I came over all Mary 'How Do You Do?' FitzGerald and decided to have a crack at DIYing my own version.
Brown sugar, oil, lemony-ness: how hard could it be to approximate, like?
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A rummage in the presses yielded some soft light brown sugar, a half-used bottle of almond oil, and that Irish kitchen staple: a Jif lemon. A coarser sugar would be better for this job, of course, but being a mostly cooking-free, baking-free zone I was just surprised that there was any class of brown sugar in the house at all.
I threw together two teaspoons of sugar with two teaspoons of almond oil and mixed in the lemon juice drop by drop.
The end result was nowhere near as lush as the Fresh version, but then that also contains gorgeous smelling things like bergamot and geranium oil. While I do have those essential oils for use in a diffuser I just don't have the aromatherapy know-how to feel comfortable adding them to a DIY concoction for use on skin, so I left them out rather than risk irritation.
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As a vaguely baking day scented body scrub, though, it works really nicely, with the brown sugar doing its buffing thang and the almond oil leaving a moisturising veil on the skin. I'll definitely mix up a bigger batch to keep in the bathroom, but I won't be doing it in front of Himself.
Apparently he was expecting a cake rather than a beauty product to materialise once the brown sugar was produced. Disappointed doesn't begin to cover it.
