Rosemary Lavender Shampoo Bar

You may remember a few entries back I have been switching to homemade shampoo. My hair feels nice and healthy, but I do kind of miss the lathery, bubbly feeling of shampoo. But I definitely do not want to switch back to regular shampoo. So I decided to make shampoo bars! what are shampoo bars? They're like natural soaps, but you use it on your hair. 

To make this shampoo first I infused my olive oil with dried rosemary and lavender. I made small lavender-bag style herb bags to infuse in my oil. You could just cover the herbs with oil but making these bags make it easy to remove the herb out later. Rosemary and lavender are great herbs to use for hair.

Here it is infusing using heat. I also used purple gromwell root powder to try to color my soap. It's purpose is mainly cosmetic. I was hoping for a pretty purple soap.

Got my kit ready.

This is the color of my oil before saponification. Lovely reddish purple.

This is the color after saponification, and after being in the oven for 20 mins! (I used hot-process soapmaking method this time) It turned from purple to sort of greenish...then later greyish.. and finally...

To settling on this stone gray colour. Shocking! The texture is different too from the cold process soap that i made before. Hot process soaps are cooked through until full saponification occurs, and by the time it is poured into the mold it is soap already and the texture is more solid than liquid. So the resulting soaps will have this rough, rustic look of handmade soap.

Although the colour is not what I wanted, I am very happy with these shampoo bars. Because of the hot process method, the soap can be used right away, and so I have been using these shampoo on my hair. It is heavenly! makes a lot of bubbles, it feels silky and lathery on my hair and the smell of rosemary and lavender is just lovely.

So now my hair care routine is this: Deep condition hair at night with virgin coconut oil (once a week), wash the next morning with this shampoo bar, then do a *vinegar rinse for a conditioner.

My hair feels well conditioned and silky smooth right after a wash. Before this right after shampooing with regular shampoo my hair feels a bit dry and a bit frizzy, then turns slightly better the next day. Loving this routine now and love these shampoo bars!

*To do a vinegar rinse: mix one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with 1 cup of water, add in a few drops of tea tree essential oil, rosemary essential oil and lavender essential oil.