In the Still Room: Lola’s Leave-In Redux
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I should have gone to go to church on Sunday, but somehow I ended up at my fave brunch café instead. Two lattes and muchos huevos rancheros later, I still had a few hours before The Mister and The Baby Kittens were expecting me home. So I headed to the movie theater. I couldn’t decide between Dark Shadows and Think Like A Man, so watched half of one and half of the other. Afterwards I headed home, but then cut a quick U-turn and drove to Trader Joe to pick up frozen fruit for smoothies. I forgot all about the fruit but scored a nice bottle of wine. The rest of the day was equally scatter-shot and scatter-brained. This was the only thing I was able to focus on for longer than a minute:
For a while I’ve wanted to scrap Lola’s Leave-in and rebuild it without relying on the crutch of Trader Joe Nourish Spa Conditioner. This new mix will be cheaper to produce, and I’ll have complete control of every item used. I purchased the ingredients some time ago, and then pretty much did nothing. But I finally slowed down a nudge and “got my beakers out”.
Notice that preservatives are intentionally omitted. This batch will be small, refrigerated and used before its shelf life expires. I’ve been reading up on natural preservatives, so we’ll cross that bridge at a later date. Anyhoo, if this goes well, I’ll accessorize it and infuse it with some other goodies, but for now I’m gonna keep it simple with this oil-in-water (meaning more water than oil) using ingredients that I know play nicely with my curls.
Also worth mentioning are the BTMS-50 and cetyl alcohol. The BTMS is an emulsifier (the glue that holds water and oil mixtures together), and both are conditioning agents. BTMS-50 is vegetable-based and derived from the natural plant oil colza (rapeseed oil). Cetyl alcohol (fatty alcohol, not the drying kind) is derived from vegetable oils like coconut oil and palm oil, and can give mixes a nice texture. Both will thicken up your mix good and fat, and help with combability and detangling.
Stay tuned for the deets on how this turns out…
Also, for everything you’ve always wanted to know about emulsifiers, check out Emulsifiers: An overview over at one of my fave blogs, Point of Interest! (thx Briana for mentioning)!
How about you? Did you work on any projects this weekend? Have you ever been to the movies by yourself?
This looks lovely! In the future, I’d like to make a leave-in conditioner with the following ingredients– aloe vera juice, cetyl alcohol, BTMS, coconut oil, vegetable glycerin & marshmallow root extract. I imagine it’d be similar to my favorite leave-in conditioner (Alba Botanica Leave-In Conditioner).
As for DIY projects I’ve done a banana & oats face mask, started infusing dried thyme into ACV
and made a hair mask (avocado/banana/coconut milk/olive oil).
Ooh these mixes sound good! Love love love marshmallow root. I’ll have to check out the Alba leave in.
This looks pretty good, I have also started experimenting with making my own conditioner. I just wanted to add in my research that a common miss conception is that cetyl alcohol is actually not an emulsifier but a thickener. Cetyl alcohol can help thicken your conditioner and is often used in conjunction with an emulsifier like BTMS. In you research I am not sure if you have looked at this website http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.ca/.
But it is a very helpful website and has mounds of information on ingredients in hair care products and also has quite a few conditioner recipes.
Thx so much for your suggestions!! Yes, I adore Susan’s website. I’m a regular over there:) She is my she-ro.
Oh and yes the post should be written to state that BTMS is an emulsifier but both are conditioning agents. Thx again!
Your welcome I look forward to a post on how your experiment with you leave-in recipe.
This new mix will be cheaper to produce, and I’ll have complete control of every item used… http://t.co/mrEtqDi4 #naturalhair #beauty
I am going to try this this weekend. I am going to play around with the oils and maybe infuse the oils with some herbs first. I also want to add banana powder or oatmeal powder in a small amount to see how it turns out.
Awesome, let me know how it turns out. I’m still playing with it, but so far I feel like I need to increase the percentage of AVJ, and decrease the percentage of BTMS. We’ll see…
Hi, I love the recipe and your website. I just wanted to find out what the shelflife is like.Thanks
Thx so much, Naomi! Since there are no preservatives, my estimate is a week tops, refrigerated. The batch I made was about 4 oz, so it was used very quickly. Hope that helps
Lola…I want to copy your recipe but I am kinda confused with the percentages. Can you please break your recipe down in ounces or tablespoons on how much I am supposed to use with each ingredients?
Hi Ynette, I would suggest starting with a small 4 ounce batch. If you take each percentage and multiple times 4 ounces, that will tell you how much of each ingredient to use. For example, .55 x 4 = 2.2 ounces of aloe vera juice and .15 x 4 = .6 ounces of coconut oil. If you have a digital scale you will be able to make these precise, but you can prob eyeball it with a regular measuring cup.
Also, note my comments above about feeling like the AVJ needed to be increased, and the BTMS decreased. The recipe as is is a little waxier than I would like so it does need some adjusting, but I hope this helps you along. Thx!!
[...] recipes with 0 Comments So I took another stab at my leave-in recipe. If you recall with the last version, I had finally dipped my toe in the BTMS-50 and cetyl alcohol pool. While the texture was nice and [...]