How-To: DIY Herbal Shampoo

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How-To: DIY Herbal Shampoo

essential oil and camomile flowers

Keep your locks lustrous the natural way with this DIY herbal shampoo tutorial from Sweet Living!

Update: It looks like Sweet Living has taken down this post due to an issue with the recipe. Apologies if you tried it and had trouble, and many thanks to the reader who brought it to my attention!

If you’re still looking for DIY beauty projects, try these instead:

10 thoughts on “How-To: DIY Herbal Shampoo

  1. Susan Barclay-Nichols says:

    This recipe was removed from the linked site as it was a poorly written recipe that wasn’t a shampoo. I guess I’m a little disappointed in your magazine for continuing to support magazines like this instead of working with experienced bath and body formulators who create safe and effective recipes who know what they are doing. Anyone with slightly more than newbie experience could see this recipe wasn’t a shampoo and was potentially unsafe. Please seek out experienced formulators and share their information with your readers!

  2. Susan Barclay-Nichols says:

    I’ve written a post on this recipe analyzing why it doesn’t work, which you can find at my linked blog. I’m a little surprised no one has taken down this link almost a full week after the Sweet Living magazine retracted it…

    1. Haley Pierson-Cox says:

      Hi, Susan. I’m not a soap/shampoo maker myself (fabric and fiber are my areas of expertise), so I appreciate your input, and totally understand the frustration of seeing instructions that just don’t make sense. Thanks for letting me know that this was the case here, and that the post had been taken down. (Alas, though I wish I could try every DIY that I feature–and double check that nothing changes after each post goes up–it sadly isn’t possible to keep up with/check in on thousands of posts and features.) When I saw your alert when I was catching up on comments this morning, I updated my original post to reflect the changes, then added a suggestions for alternative projects. Thanks again for letting me know that there was a problem! – Haley on CRAFT

      P.s. Feel free to leave a link to your blog post in the comments–I’m sure it would be of interest to other readers.

  3. Susan Barclay-Nichols says:

    Thank for you for updating this page to reflect the problems with the herbal shampoo. I hate to say it but the issue was never with the instructions for the herbal shampoo: The issue is that the recipe in question wouldn’t produce anything remotely like a shampoo. I’ve written a post about this recipe and different ways we can evaluate whether a recipe is a valid one or not on my blog. (Find it at http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.ca/2013/08/herbal-shampoo-lets-see-if-this-is-good.html).

    I realize I’m some might see me as some insane crafting harpy who only points out the negative, but I take issue with the shampoo recipes to which you’ve linked now. These are cold process type soaps, which have an alkaline (or over 8) pH. Our hair has a pH of 3.5 to 6, and we should be using acidic products on it, like shampoo made with surfactants. Most people using a cold process, alkaline soap on their hair will experience a build of minerals, which leads to dullness, and a lifting of the cuticle, which leads to a dull appearance along with increased friction damage, tangles, and mats. Once damaged, our hair cannot be repaired, only temporarily altered by using proper conditioners. I would be more than happy to send you links to a number of different sites that offer recipes for pH balanced shampoos, including a number of them that can be found on my blog. They can’t be made with ingredients we find around the house, but as crafters, we get the need to invest in a few supplies now and then to create something awesome.

    1. Haley Pierson-Cox says:

      Thanks again for your feedback, Susan. Thanks as well for sharing the link to your post on the subject. I’m certain that readers will find the information that you’ve provided to be quite helpful when deciding which DIY beauty products are most appropriate for their own individual needs. In the future, if you have links to recipes/methods that you’d like to recommend for future CRAFT posts, definitely don’t hesitate to email them to me. (My own blog–with a contact page where you can find my email address–is linked in my name above.) -Haley on CRAFT

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Haley Pierson-Cox from Red-Handled Scissors is a maker of crafts, a lover of cats, an avid swearing enthusiast, a cross-stitch book author, and a general purveyor of quirk. She's also sometimes an irritable cartoon named Tiny Cranky Haley. https://www.redhandledscissors.com

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