There’s something magical that happens when you put my sister and I together in a room. Effortlessly, we both fly into uber-productive mode. It never feels like we’re being really productive, though. Often there’s a lot of giggling, time spent making up songs on the spot, and searching for our favourite 
videos on youtube. (Seriously. Click the link.) But between all of that, amazing things happen.
Last Tuesday was one of those nights. Between 7pm-10pm, we made a huge pot of chili, a round of cornbread, a corkboard, 1 litre of home-made shampoo, and a silly song. Yup, it was a pretty amazing night.
Because things have been so crazy lately, and in an effort to catch up on my postings, I’m just gonna cut to the chase. I now give you…
How To Make Your Own Shampoo!
Materials
- 500 mL chamomile flower water
- 10 g xanthan gum
- 5-10 mL lemon oil
- 5-10 mL cedarwood oil
- 500 mL liquid castile soap
Before we begin with the instructions, I need to give another huge shout out to Tracey at Anarres Natural Health. You may remember Tracey from such posts as How To Make Your Own Sunscreen. Well, let me say, Tracey was my one-stop shop for not only all the materials mentioned, but also for a great deal of information about making shampoo. Thank you Tracey!!!
So, to start…
- Sterilize all your equipment (remember this from the sunscreen tutorial? Give everything a good rub down with strong rubbing alcohol).
- Slowly heat the chamomile flower water in a pot on the stove. As it’s heating you can add 1 tsp of citric acid. This is something I didn’t do, but found out from Tracey later. This helps open your pores and preserve the shampoo. Hurrah!
- In go the essential oils. You can choose a variety of fresh/dried herbs or essential oils to add to your shampoo depending on your hair type. A google search will turn up lots of suggestions. In my case, I added lemon oil (for fair hair) and cedarwood oil, which is a balancer, and
helps with dandruff. - Then, we added the xanthan gum. Truth be told, I couldn’t really remember the order that Tracey had told me when adding ingredients, but it seems to have worked. At first, the xanthan gum looked all goopey, but then we used a hand-held blender and it started thickening up just like it was supposed to.
- By this point we had removed the pot from the heat, and added the liquid castile soap. More mixing.
- Last but not least, let your mixture stand overnight. According to Tracey, the mixture can expand/contract in the first few hours after begin mixed. We waited about 3 hours and then filled the bottles part way up, and finished the next day.
That’s pretty much it. I’ve been using (and loving!) the shampoo all week. The two things I’ve noticed is that the shampoo hasn’t stayed thick like it was when Chris and I originally put the xanthan gum in. Also, there aren’t any suds when you use this shampoo. That’s because of a lack of sodium lauryl sulfate, which is the agent in most shampoos that give you the suds. It’s also the part of most shampoos that has led to many questions about health concerns (the most serious of which is concern that it may be a carcinogen). I’ve poked around a fair number of resources and have decided for myself that I don’t want to have SLS lathered into my scalp. But I’ll leave it up to you to make that decision for yourself, and strongly encourage you to throw Sodium Lauryl Sulphate into your search engine and read around for a little while.
I’m going to leave you there, and will be back in a day or two with the cork board post! Happy Shampoo-ing!
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