Blue shampoo

I ran out of my rhubarb shampoo a while ago, so I thought I'd make some more. I used basically the same recipe, although I reduced the panthenol a bit and added 0.5% glycol distearate, since I liked it so much in my sister's all-in-one wash. Other than that, just the colour and fragrance are different.

This time I went with blue colourant, as I think it goes nicely with the Crabtree and Evelyn's Nantucket Briar clone FO from Canwax that I used. I wasn't 100% impressed with all the FOs I ordered from them (toffee treats smells like burnt sugar and dissapears in CP soap while making the soap weirdly soft and sticky), but this one is pretty killer. Although I see the irony in describing the quintessential old lady fragrance as "pretty killer." I love it. I drink tea and smell like a grandma. :D

Nag champoo and conditioner

My mom is running out of shampoo, so it is the duty of her dear, alchemist daughter to remedy the situation!

I came up with a formula similar to the rhubarb shampoo I made for myself, but increased the amounts of glycerin, dimethicone, and cyclomethicone a bit to account for her thick, dry hair. I also left out the sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate and replaced it with a blend of sodium lauryl sulfoacetate and disodium laureth sulfosuccinate, two gentle surfactants. Otherwise I used the same ingredients.

Of course I fragranced it with nag champa, and for fun I coloured it green.

Then I made her a matching conditioner. I used 4% BTMS-50 along with some cetyl alcohol for slip and the synergistic magic it does with the BTMS, and some cetrimonium chloride for detangling. I added some other non-oil goodies like glycerin, panthenol, and hydrolyzed oats. I didn't want to make it too thick or heavy, since I know my mom doesn't like to wash her hair every day and I didn't want her to get greasy too quick. Since it's a matching pair to the shampoo, it is also green and smells like nag champa.

I hope she likes them! I know she likes that I called it nag champoo, because she is a word nerd. :D

Third try at shampoo - rhubarb!

I was down to one little blob of my sandalwood shampoo, plus I had just received a new shipment of ingredients, so it was time to make another batch! My new ingredients included some different surfactants and (insert singing angels here) proper surfactant thickener!

My last two shampoo attempts saw steady improvement directly correlated with a steady increase in the concentration of surfactants. I was not totally happy with the cleaning ability of the last one as it took some work to get it onto my scalp and into any kind of lather there, so I increased the surfactant concentration again. I also decided to include one of my new suractants, sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate, which, according to Susan, is a gentle but effective degreaser, along with my regular cocamidopropyl betaine and sodium laureth sulfate. I was aiming for 50% surfactants, but a pouring mishap meant I ended up with 55%. I included a bit of glycerin, though I have reduced it a bit from last time because my hair tends toward frizziness. My formula also included water, of course, cyclomethicone and dimethicone, hydrolyzed oats, panthenol, and a preservative. I needed only half a percent of thickener (Crothix, INCI PEG-150 pentaerythrityl tetrastearate (and) PEG-6 caprylic/capric trigylcerides (and) water), and it is perfect shampoo consistency. Hooray!

It is fragranced with a fragrance oil called ruby rhubarb. So good! Rhubarb is one of my favourite things ever. I want to be a rhubarb farmer. I received some colourants in my shipment too, so I coloured it a pinky red. I considered trying to somehow make a rhubarb-esque red-to-green gradient, but realized it would just end up brown as it mixed.

I've used it once so far, and it's pretty great. I don't need to use much because it has a high surfactant concentration. It lathers really well and leaves my hair and scalp (yay) feeling clean. It is definitely not very conditioning, and I don't think I'd dare trying to run my fingers through my hair as I rinse it out for fear of tightening knots and breaking hairs. Running my fingers through as I rinse shampoo is a habit I've gotten into over the last couple of years and I'm trying to stop, since I think it is contributing to my split ends and breakage. Once I applied conditioner, my hair felt great and easily untangled with my fingers.

24 hours after using this shampoo, my hair was abnormally grease-free, to the point where I actually debated washing it again. That never happens, and certainly not on a 30° day. I think this formula might be a winner!

Shampoo!

After my entirely lacklustre (pun sort of intended :P) first shampoo and relatively smashing success at conditioner, it seemed like the shampoo needed another go.

I stripped it right down and put in a fair bit more surfactants than last time. My water phase included just-boiled water (as I wasn't double boilering this time due to not including the solid glycol distearate), cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium laureth sulfate, and glycerin, and my cool-down phase included preservative, fragrance, and a touch of dimethicone. Once these were all mixed and cooled, I added 3% salt to thicken.

It worked! It was thick, maybe a touch too thick, but it produced okay lather and was much more like shampoo than the last one!

Personally, I think I will be adding still greater amounts of surfactants; what can I say, I have greasy hair and I like the feel of surfactants on it! Despite it being a somewhat-less-mild surfactant (and despite the opinions of the granola crowd and the uninformed, who think it is the devil), I really like the feel of sodium lauryl sulfate in my shampoos. I might buy some if I can ever find a supplier, preferably in Canada.

I don't always say it, but I always test the pH of my products and adjust if needed. I like to keep my products (especially leave-on products) at pH 4-5. The skin and hair are naturally acidic, and acidic products disrupt them less than alkaline ones. Also, having a more acidic pH means many preservatives will be more effective, especially the more so-called "natural" (can't say I get how they are natural), food-grade ones like sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate.

Sham... poo? And the downfall of my favourite beaker.

With my last experiment a failure, I decided to go back to a recipe created by someone else. I thought I'd totally change course and try a surfactant product. After some research, I decided to make a shampoo based on Susan Barclay-Nichols' daily-use shampoo. I shampoo my hair pretty much every day because it is really oily - and looks it - because it is also fine, and I mean super, baby-fine. I thought a gentler, lower surfactant recipe sounded good because I do wash my hair so often and it is prone to breakage and crunchy, splitting ends; no use exacerbating those problems.

<anecdote>I actually discovered Susan's blog while researching hair products. Some commercial shampoo and conditioner I was using had recently reformulated recipes, and I found the changes left my hair feeling waxy, coated, sticky, and gross after using, in addition to getting greasy way faster, (having been pretty nice products before,) and I was trying to figure out what ingredients were causing the grossness. Turns out it was the polyquaterniums, which are film-forming, cationic conditioning agents. My hair hates them. It doesn't seem to matter which one it is, I've tried 76, 10, 7, 34(?) and likely a bunch of others, and I've come to the conclusion that I just have to avoid them in hair products. I like them in body wash though, and lots of people love them as conditioners. So needless to say, I left the polyquats out of the shampoo recipe I made.</anecdote>

Here are the tweaks I made to the recipe:

Surfactant phase
water = water
anionic surfactant = sodium laureth sulfate (an anionic surfactant)
cocamidopropyl betaine = cocamidopropyl betaine (an amphoteric surfactant)
polyquat 7 or honeyquat = left the heck out!
glycerin = glycerin
hydrolyzed protein = hydrolyzed oat protein
aloe vera = water (don't have any aloe)
= glycol distearate (thickener, moisturizer, pearlizer/opacifier)

Additive phase
dimethicone = dimethicone and cyclomethicone (my hair loves silicones)
panthenol = panthenol
preservative = preservative
fragrance oil or essential oil = fragrance oil

So not too many changes. Just left out the polyquats, subbed water for the aloe, added cyclomethicone, and added the glycol distearate.

My surfactant phase went into my favourite 3-spouted beaker and into a double boiler. Which was way. too. hot. My beaker made a "pop" noise and all my ingredients were in the pot of boiling water with pieces of beaker. Oops. I now start my double boiler from room temperature with beakers already in, it seems even Pyrex can't handle those kind of temperature changes.

I tried again with a different measuring cup, accidentally adding an extra 5% water, but went ahead anyway. I heated the surfactant phase until the glycol distearate had melted, gave it a little stir, and took it out to cool. I was impatient, so I put it in a cold water bath. Lo and behold, there came to be bits of white grainy stuff in my shampoo. The glycol distearate was solidifying and coming out of solution! I heated it again until it was melted and homogeneous and took it off the heat, letting it cool naturally this time. And again, white grainy bits. Back it went, onto the heat a third time. This time once the GD was melted, I mixed it with my milk frother. I had hoped to avoid using it so I wouldn't foam up the shampoo, but it was a last resort. This time it stayed mixed as it cooled!

Once it was cooled I added the additives, increasing the preservative a bit to compensate for the extra water. It was runny. Even after 24 hours it was runny. I added 7% more SLeS and a bit more preservative. It was still runny. I tried adding 3% salt to thicken it according to the salt curve. It thickened. A lot. Into a kind of gelatinous lump. Whatever, it was fine, it was usable.

When I used it I liked it even less. It made no lather and I had to use piles of it to get my hair feeling clean-ish, though it did get my hair clean-ish. 48 hours later it was liquid again.

So, I think I added too much (3%) glycol distearate, as too much suppresses foam, and there was none whatsoever. I also think that maybe the concentration of surfactants just wasn't high enough for the salt curve to work, but I'm less sure about that. Anyway, it smelled nice, but most of it ended up getting dumped out. Good thing I make small batches.

Also, it turns out my favourite beaker wasn't antique, irreplaceable lab-ware; they are available at Canadian Tire, where my mom got me a new one. :D