DIY Coffee Body Scrub

As I have mentioned before, we gave $5 Christmas gifts to our siblings this past year. One of my favorite gifts was the homemade coffee body scrub that I put together. I wanted to make the gift a bit more special than just good smelling sludge, so I DIYed the jars as well. Overall, the project less than $12 for three jars of scrub.

I looked around the internet for recipes but couldn't pick just one. I decided to just use them as inspiration and also to go with only three ingredients: coconut oil, coffee grounds, and brown sugar. I bought the brown sugar at Aldi, the coconut oil at Marshalls, and the coffee was a gift from J's brother and sister-in-law. They brought it back from their Italian honeymoon, but unfortunately we forgot about the second bag. We didn't rediscover the bag until it had gone stale - so sad! But it served as my inspiration for this gift. I couldn't bear the thought of throwing away beautiful Italian coffee that still smelled soooo yummy.

I used approximately a 1:1:1 ratio for all the ingredients, however this is totally up to personal preference. I used the whole bag of coffee and coconut oil, but slightly less brown sugar. I prefer my scrubs to be pretty thick but not too rough and scratchy (hence more grounds than sugar). I hope my sisters-in-law and brother's girlfriend have the same preferences as me!

Now for the jars. I used empty jelly jars that I have been saving for this specific purpose, so those cost me nothing. Once the jelly had been eaten, I washed the jars in hot soapy water to get rid of any sticky stuff from the labels. Once they were dry, I took the lids outside to spray paint with my gold spray paint (I can't believe how many projects one can of spray paint will cover). I decided to make two of the jars a bit fancier by repurposing thrift store knobs as lid decor.

The knobs were a bit rough when I first found them at Habitat for Humanity, but I saw potential and the 25 cent price tag for each was too good to pass up. I had J cut off the hardware part of the knobs so they would sit flush on the lids. He used a dremel to do the cutting. Then, I rubbed down the knobs with nail polish remover to clean and degloss - an awesome tip from my family's paint store expert. He says that before you paint anything plastic, rub it down with the remover and the paint will stick so much better. Once that step was done, I just sprayed them down with a few coats of gold spray paint to match the lids. J glued the newly beautiful knobs onto the painted lids with super glue. Very easy - especially when your husband joins in on the fun.

However I did make a mistake. I forgot to add labels to the jars before mailing them up to J's family. Oops! Good thing I remembered before Christmas day. I was able to tell my mother-in-law what the gifts were so she could identify when the girls opened them up. Thanks, nona!


Enjoy this post? You can read more about our DIY projects. Two of our favorites are the beaded monogrammed gloves and the monogrammed jewelry dish, both projects cost less than $10!