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Make Your Own Bath & Body Products

Lesson 18 of 25

Different Kinds of Exfoliants


Make Your Own Bath & Body Products

Lesson 18 of 25

Different Kinds of Exfoliants


Lesson Info

Different Kinds of Exfoliants

Before we dive into recipes though let's talk about some of my very favorite exfoliants. So these are some of my favorite exfoliants. This is fine grain pink sea salt. And fine grain pink sea salt is stimulating, it's healing, it's hand mined, literally hand mined from ancient salt beds within the Himalayan mountains. So that pink is a natural pink color. And of course if you use this Himalayan pink sea salt exfoliation on your legs before you shave, for example, you have the smoothest, smoothest legs in the world. Next a really popular exfoliant is white sugar. Right? Everybody's got white sugar. It's economical, it's easy, it's easy to find. It's a really gentle scrub. You probably have it at home. It is not my very, very, very favorite exfoliant to use though because white sugar is fairly round in texture. So not a lot of scrubbiness. And think about what happens to sugar in water. It dissolves. So it's actually a really gentle exfoliant because of it's round shape and because it di...

ssolves so easily. Brown sugar. So brown sugar is great for face. It's also okay with for body and it's basically a sugar that's flavored with molasses. Which means that it's extra high in vitamin B and antioxidants. Next we have cranberry seeds. So, and this generally just is all the seeds. So, cranberry seeds, strawberry seeds, any berry that has a seed on it you can turn into a scrub. And if you're like oh well I have a friend that has a blackberry farm, I'm just going to get blackberry seeds and dry them and I'm gonna make them myself. These are irradiated to make sure they do not sprout and grow. Right, they're a seed, they're supposed to sprout and grow. Can you imagine giving someone a scrub that had all these beautiful fresh blackberry or raspberry seeds that you had dried yourself and then they started having stuff grow out of their shower drain? So, if you're gonna use seeds make sure you're getting an irradiated seed that will not just naturally start growing for you. These are walnut shells and there's a lot of different nuts that you can grind up to make an exfoliant. One of the reasons I like to use nuts as face exfoliants is because they don't dissolve in liquid. So when you're washing your face, you're washing your face or you're washing your body, it stays scrubby the entire time. And then we have over here ground loofah. And loofah, interestingly enough, is basically it's a vegetable. And often times when you buy loofah it comes like this flat and in order to get it to puff up like this you just put it in the water and dry it and it puffs up. When you're using it in a scrub, using a ground loofah means that it's going to actually mix into the scrub. It doesn't dissolve in water so it's another great option for you. If you end up buying it big like this you can grind it down in the coffee grinder but that'll kill your coffee grinder pretty fast. So it's good to buy the ground loofah as is. These are jojoba beads and they're smooth and they're round and they're made of jojoba esters and then colored either with dyes or with pigments. And jojoba beads are an all natural product. And I don't know if you guys have seen but there's been some controversy about plastic beads clogging up our water ways and getting into the fish and into ecosystems and then getting back into our bodies. And they're being banned in multiple states as we speak. Jojoba beads are a great alternative because they provide color, they provide great exfoliation and they're biodegradable. They're made out of jojoba esters. This is bamboo extract. And so this is really gritty and it's an actual bamboo extract and it's very rich in mineral salts and it's rich in vitamin D. This is pumice literally from the volcanic glass, right? It's actually pumice. It's ground up into super, super, super fine. In general terms, the finer the exfoliant the easier it is to use on your face. Our faces are so delicate that you would never want to use like a really large grain salt on your face 'cause you could actually scratch or abrade your face. Whereas a large, sharper kind of salt is great on rough patches like elbows and feet and knees but definitely not on face. So I love using pumice on face. And then finally this is colloidal oatmeal. And it's a specialty kind of oatmeal that you can use as a gentle exfoliant or you can also use, interestingly enough, as a facial mask. So those are some of my favorite exfoliants to use. And like many of the other things that we've talked about in this course, if you can't eat it, you kinda wanna be thinking twice about it. So you wanna make sure that whatever you're using as a cosmetic grade, it's been purified. It's meant to be used on the face. And that you're using products, if it's a food product, that you're using something that would be safe on your skin. So again, I like to stay away from the spices in any sort of exfoliant. So yeah, cinnamon would definitely be an exfoliant but also burn your face. So make sure that whatever you're doing is something that is not a skin irritant and is skin safe.

Class Description



  • The cold process soap making technique 
  • How to formulate you own lotion and balm recipes 
  • Everything you need to know about sugar and salt scrubs
  • How to comply with federal rules and regulations  




Alexandra Paniagua


Julz P


a Creativelive Student
