Clean up Your Routine with Shampoo Bars

Sure, you've heard of homemade soap. But have you tried your hand at making *shampoo bars yet??
As I’ve learned about parabens, SLS and other standard bath and body ingredient nasties, I’ve experimented with non-traditional ways to clean myself. I’ve tried the “No ‘Poo” baking soda route for cleaning my hair and while it does work very well and is CHEAP, when I’m having a bad run of migraines, I want the ease of some suds to clean my mane. I’ve been wanting to make shampoo bars for a long, long time and now I’ve finally done it.
It was love at first lather.
I looked at a lot of recipes and liked one at Crunchy Chicken a lot except for one thing. The palm oil. You may have different feelings about it than I do, but I’m not so keen about deforesting the environment of orangutans when I can avoid it. Sure you can get sustainable, but I’d rather just skip it. So I’ve recalculated the recipe to use olive oil instead and used it myself for a couple of months now to ensure that the concoction is still copacetic. It is. In fact, I’d say it is down right fabulous. My hair is soft, shiny and as manageable as it has ever been.

A few things you should know about this recipe before you dive in to making it. I’ve scaled it up from Crunchy Chicken’s original recipe to fit in my Custom Wooden Drop-side Soap mold, so it is pretty large- nearly 3 lbs of oils in fact. If you want to make less, feel free to reduce it proportionally, but you may find that it isn’t cheaper to do so when you go to buy oils. Also, while it IS much cheaper to make this than buying solid shampoo bars from fancy bath and body stores, it isn’t a super cheap recipe given the ingredients so be prepared for that when you go ingredient shopping. Also, if you’ve never ever made soap before, you might possibly want to make a batch of soap from cheaper ingredients first, just for your first go. None of this is HARD to do, but with expensive ingredients, your stress level might go up a bit. Just sayin’.
For all you first time soap makers, I’d suggest you start your soap making adventure with my basic and CHEAP olive oil castile recipe and basic soap making instructions here.
This is a cold process soap. All standard precautions in dealing with lye should be observed. There are variations for light and dark hair below, but the base oils are the same.

Base Shampoo Bar Recipe

Liquid Oils
8 fl oz (272 g) Castor Bean Oil
8 fl oz (230 g) Sunflower Oil
6 fl oz (162 g) Olive Oil
4 fl oz (102 g) Jojoba Oil** currently in worldwide shortage, may substitute apricot or almond
Solid Oils/Butters
16 oz (453 g) Coconut Oil
2 oz (57g) Cocoa Butter
17 fl oz water
Sodium Hydroxide (lye/caustic soda) 6.2 oz (176 g)
1-2 oz of essential oils at trace to personal taste
Cure for 4-6 weeks or until bars are hard. Standard pH testing suggested, as with all soap making.

Citrus Zest Shampoo Bar for Light Hair

Substitute strong brewed and cooled chamomile tea for the water in the base recipe. Scent with a mix of lemongrass and citrus oils to taste of approximately 1-2 oz of essential oils. Don’t leave out lemongrass as it anchors the other citrus scents to your bars. This bar has a mild lightening effect.

Peppermint Zing Shampoo Bar for Dark Hair

Steep a cup of fresh rosemary in 17 oz of peppermint tea, cool well, strain and use as your liquid. Scent with essential oils of rosemary and peppermint, 1-1.5 oz of essential oil as peppermint and rosemary are much stronger than citrus oils. This bar is great for enhancing the shine and color of dark hair.
Note that I am very sensitive to rosemary oil, so the bars for sale have some fresh rosemary oil that I extracted but no additional essential rosemary oil in them. You get some rosemary action for strong, smooth hair, but I can’t smell the rosemary in the finished product, which is what I wanted for my own personal use.

Full sized 4 oz bars and mini 2 oz bars on sale at the Kiwi Handmade store. If you’d like to try a bar before you splash out on all the oils or if you’d just like to buy a bar instead of going to the fuss of making your own.
Kiwis can get all the supplies they need at our Soapcraft, proud supporter of the Frugal Kiwi-and unsurprisingly where I get all my own soapmaking supplies. If you want to tart up your soaps with groovy colours, make sure to check out the dye lab colours like the ones I’ve used for these shampoo bars.
http://sulia.com/kris.bordessa/f/21b8aefd-1e19-4c65-a0c5-9e846c873849/