Natural feijoa lip scrub

Difficulty: Beginner
Time: 30 minutes
Yields: 4 pots (15 ml each)

Don’t be put off by the brown colouring, the scrub is amazing and delicious!

Lip scrubs are totally underrated in the skincare routine. We pamper, cleanse and protect our skin, but our lips often just get a lick of balm and that’s it. Regular exfoliation also benefit our lips, not only making them smooth for lipstick, but by removing dead skin cells, which helps keep lips soft and supple, retaining moisture and preventing cracked lips. Just like our skin needs looking after, so do our lips.

This feijoa lip scrub is made from only natural ingredients, including brown sugar, sweet almond oil, and ground dried feijoa fruit. The benefit of this recipe is it helps exfoliate by gently scrubbing, but the mild acidity (think AHA) from the feijoa also helps loosen the dead skin cells by dissolving the glue-like lipids holding them to the fresh, new skin cells underneath.

To get the ground dried feijoa (the brown powder in the picture above), you can either use a food dehydrator, if you are lucky enough to have one, otherwise you can use the oven. For this tutorial, you only need one feijoa. Slice the fruit into 3-5 mm slices and place them on a baking tray lined with a sheet of baking paper, or ideally on a wire rack. Heat the oven to the minimum setting it has, usually around 60 degrees Celsius. Turn the slices over a couple of times during the dehydrating process. Depending on your oven, it can take about 4 hours for the fruit to completely dry out. If you don’t want the feijoa to go brown like mine (that’s just natural oxidation), you can dip them in a solution of 1 teaspoon of citric acid to one cup of water before dehydrating. Once dehydrated, grind the slices in a blender.

ONE: Add the dry ingredients, brown sugar and ground feijoa, to a small bowl.

TWO: Next, add the glycerin and sweet almond oil, and give everything a good stir.

THREE: I’m adding one drop of spearmint essential oil and two drops of lemon essential oil to this scrub for a clean, refreshing fragrance, and because of its cooling, calming and antimicrobial properties, helping to keep your lips healthy.

FOUR: Lastly, scoop the exfoliating scrub into the pots. Enjoy!

To use this yummy feijoa scrub, apply a generous amount to your lips and gently rub in circular motion without any pressure. Because the scrub also contains moisturising sweet almond oil, leave it on your lips for a minute or so to absorb the oil, and then using a damp cloth, gently wipe off. For the perfect kissable pout, exfoliate your lips once a week!