Here's how to... make your own beauty body and face scrubs (it's DIY we can all get behind!)

So, it’s spring. It’s supposed to be warm, right? I’m choosing to ignore the fact it hailed, HAILED, just five minutes ago and the sky is currently as grey as Philip Schofield.

Nevertheless *puts positive hat on* it's that time of year. The time when the sun finally pokes his head out of the clouds and sets a golden glow on the world. A glow that will offer a much needed shimmer to pasty white legs all over Britain. You’ve shaved/waxed/sugared/zapped and your legs are silky smooth, but after months of jeans, leggings and onesies they are looking decidedly pasty and patchy. Well, unless you’re sporting a Towie-esque glow, of course.

So, how can you bring them back to their best, ready to be shorts ready for festival season?

Sugar and salt scrubs are perennially popular, with good reason. They offer exfoliation and beneficial oils that sink in to the skin and offer moisturisation. But why spend a tenner on a commercially produced product when all the ingredients that you need can be found around the house, and you can customise the scrub to your own needs?

So, the first step is to decide if you like it rough, or if you are more of a gentle soul. Which are you, salt or sugar?

Salt offers the best exfoliation, so is great for removing dead skin and adding a just-scrubbed glow to skin. These scrubs also offer therapeutic benefits, which can help skin conditions and remove toxins and impurities from the skin.

Sugar scrubs are more gentle and are good for more regular scrubbing. So if you have sensitive skin, or don’t want a rough scrub, sugar is your friend. If you use brown sugar, it smells amazing, like treacle, when it dissolves.

So, now you’ve picked salt or sugar you need to add oil to the mixture. If you don’t want to buy a specific body or face oil then olive oil works fine, but you can gain extra benefits from using apricot, coconut or almond oil. Apricot is good to soothe and heal sore skin, coconut is good for dry skin and premature aging and almond is great for improving your complexion.

You need 1 part oil to 2 parts sugar/salt, it doesn’t matter whether you want to make one treatment or seven, as long as you stick to that rule. So, for instance 30g oil to 60g sugar.

You can stop at that point, and have a perfectly good scrub, but if you want added benefits then you can add essential oils and flower petals to the scrub. Here are a few ideas:

For even skin

10 drops of rose oil

2 drops of chamomile oil

2 drops of lavender oil

2 drops of lemon oil

For dry skin

10 drops of chamomile oil

2 drops of sandalwood oil

2 drops of carrot seed oil

2 drops of geranium oil

For oily skin

10 drops of lemon oil

10 drops of geranium oil

2 drops of rosemary oil

3 drops of juniper oil

So, get making scrubs – it’s fun and cheap and in no time you’ll be baring all with pride!