Luxury Coffee Body Scrub (Patreon)

[Version without music] 

I'm happy to bring to you a(nother) cozy Spa soundscape! Sorry this was the best I could do after a series of frustrating fails. This video, however, fulfills one of the reasons why I create, which I'm gonna write a whole nother post about, now that I've identified my motivations. That's why I'm happy to have it on my channel and hope you will find it enjoyable. 

After the last one (Head, Shoulders, Neck & Soul) I wanted something warmer and when I was researching (browsing hotel websites for Spa treatments to rip off), as soon as my brain spotted the word "Coffee" I instantly clicked with the idea of a coffee body scrub. I've been using variations of lemon+sugar scrubs my whole adult life so coffee scrub is somewhat new to me. After a quick google search I found multiple recipes, got the general idea of ingredients and measurements and adapted it to make it my own with the honey and cinnamon. 

☯ Coffee Scrub recipe from the video for your personal enjoyment: 

1 cup coffee grounds (medium or medium/fine)
1 cup sugar (coconut sugar, white, brown, any)
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp ground cinnamon

Gently melt the coconut oil and honey together, do not boil. Let it cool but not solidify - this helps the sugar not dissolve. Add cinnamon, coffee grounds and sugar - mix well and fill into an air tight container. They say you can store it at room temperature but I store mine in the fridge just to be safe and simply warm up a small amount when I intend to use it. A small cup of coffee scrub inside a bigger cup of hot water from the tap does the trick within a couple minutes. 

It's pretty messy in the shower but makes your skin oh so soft! Enjoy ☯


Back to the making of this video. 

I played around with this background with the intent to create a very warm and safe atmosphere - more indulgent than refreshing because, in my humble opinion, coffee is a girl's best friend. I didn't have any brown candles so I used the red ones I bought a long time ago for a different video (that I'm still making). This cozy background is utterly void of electric lighting - the entire set is lit by 12 or 13 candles, arranged to cast a warm glow on all the decorative crap I found in my cupboards and incense drawer. Yes, the solitary cinnamon stick is one of such finds. I don't know why I felt the need to highlight it, probably to get a soft and defocused background. Don't mind me nerding out over aesthetic crap. 

Recording the soundscape was a truly messy endeavor - coffee flying everywhere! It all made little banging noises whenever little granules of coffee and sugar hit the aluminum tripod that took an eternity to edit out. As you probably already know, I use my own skin for sounds of rubbing stuff on skin - and different body parts create different sounds so I like to use my arms and hands from the chest up and my knees/legs from the chest down, with the obvious exception of the actual arms. Damn was my skin soft after this. (After I washed it all off in the shower).

As per usual, I had a general idea but no script - In soundscapes it's really easy to improvise because I can just edit out anything I don't like without anyone noticing. For the face portion especially, it took quite a bit of playing around with the scrubbing sounds because it was so close to the recorder, to get them gentle enough and not harsh sounding. But one of the loveliest things, in my opinion, that came out of this was the back petting and personal attention portion. Somehow I just felt the need to tell you how beautiful you are. Felt appropriate for a skin treatment, y'know. 

I think I'm finally getting the hang of the music volume aswell. In the software, it sounds a lot louder than it ends up sounding in the rendered video, so if it's a comfortable level in the software, many people complain they can't even hear it. That's why I run every video by Jack to get a second opinion on how it sounds through "regular" headphones. Lately, no one has complained about not being able to hear the music, so I assume that it works just fine for everyone when it's "borderline acceptable" for me in the software. 

The music itself was a lucky find - Since the theme was coffee, I wanted some more low, maybe oriental sounding music as opposed to the high pitched drones, synths and noisy bells of every other meditation/relaxation music. But my dear Adrian von Ziegler whom I proudly support on here happened to compose two tracks that ended up working just fine for this project: Desert Magic and Silent Sentinel. I think it gives my video an enchanting character and more luxurious feel. It also sets it apart from every other Spa video I've ever made which is kind of important when one publishes two Spa soundscapes back to back I think. 

So, I started out with about 84 minutes of raw recording for this one - but due to the repetitive nature of the scrubbing sounds, I decided to condense it into a 30 minute intense personal attention session. I mean, there's only so many ways you can rub coffee on skin. And I wanted to avoid giving anyone overstimulation aggression - yes, like the thing you can give cats if you pet them too much, which is why they suddenly attack you if you don't stop. I get this a lot with repetition of any kind and even though I switched it up as much as possible, it's still the same scrub on the same skin so the similarity added to the repetition factor. As a creator, I tread the fine line between relaxing and annoying. 

Let me know what you think of this video - not being an hour long might be a welcome change for my channel and a good length for some intense tingles, maybe in the early evening after work, so you can enjoy the rest of your evening all relaxed and tranquil - but that's just me projecting my ideal outcome onto people I can't see and know nothing about. Regardless of when and how, I hope this Spa session provides you with a break from your everyday life and some well deserved relaxation. 

Thank you for supporting me in making these videos for you and for giving me purpose.