by Marie | Jan 12, 2026 | Articles
I found every skincare DIYer & beauty brand’s worst nightmare in the reviews for an $80CAD product on Sephora’s website. This one-star warning was right at the top of the reviews.
I took a look at the other one star reviews, and again—”Horrible. Grew mold”. “Grew mold. Do not recommend.” Oh dear.
But here’s the thing… those reviewers were completely wrong. A few of the reviews complaining about mould included photos; I immediately recognized the problem and quick check of the ingredient list confirmed my diagnosis.
It wasn’t mold, but it was a mistake I’ve seen a lot of DIYers make, too. So, today we’re digging into what that mistake is because you should never have to explain to an upset, grossed out customer or friend that no, that isn’t mold, and even though it is lumpy (sorry about that), it is actually totally safe to use.
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The product in question was a shimmery body oil I found on the Sephora website as I was doing research for a shimmery body oil formulation. It was a completely anhydrous (aka water-free) formulation, so barring some seriously wet contamination, this product literally could not grow mold.
What it was actually doing was going grainy. This problem is much more common in solid anhydrous products like body butters and balms, but certain ingredients and situations can cause it to happen in liquid products, too.
To help you avoid that, let’s quickly recap what graininess is and why it happens.
Oils & butters are made up of a variety of fatty acids like oleic, linoleic, and linolenic (liquid, unsaturated fats) and stearic, myristic, lauric, and palmitic (solid, saturated fats). Each has its own characteristics, but in a discussion of graininess, melting point is the big one.
Graininess happens when a product melts (or even just begins to melt), and then cools the wrong way. The “wrong way” is any way that allows the higher melting point fatty acids in the product to cool before everything else does, creating hard little blobs in a product that’s otherwise softer than it should be.
Because melting is the start of the problem, the closer a product lives to its melting point, the more likely things are to go wrong.
So why was this body oil going grainy? The answer is right in the ingredient list, where coconut oil occupied the top spot.
Coconut oil is a funny “oil”. While oils like sunflower oil and almond oil stay liquid unless you put them in the fridge or freezer, coconut oil will solidify at temperatures below about 24°C (75°F). This means it is usually solid at “room temperature” here in Canada, but will also melt during a summer heat wave.
Coconut oil solidifies for the same reason any solid fat does—it contains a lot of solid saturated fatty acids.
Coconut oil in a tub at “room temperature” in a Canadian summer; it’s started to melt, but is still mostly solid.
According to Modern Cosmetics: Ingredients of Natural Origin, coconut oil is approximately:
- 7% caprylic acid
- 6% capric acid
- 48% lauric acid
- 18% mysristic acid
- 9% palmitic acid
- 3% stearic acid
- 6% oleic acid
- 2% linoleic acid
Lauric, myristic, palmitic, stearic are all saturated, totalling 78% saturated fat content. For comparison, shea butter is only about 42% saturated fat!
If you’ve used both shea butter and coconut oil, you’ll know they’re very different from one another even if they are both solid at 21°C (70°F). Despite its lower saturated fat content, shea butter has a much richer, creamier feel than coconut oil. It also melts much more slowly when massaged into the skin. This is because the primary saturated fats in coconut oil (lauric and myristic acids) have much lower melting points than the fatty acids that make shea butter solid—stearic and palmitic.
Shea butter on the left, coconut oil on the right. They’ve been sitting on my arm for about a minute—notice how the coconut oil is melting quite quickly, and the shea butter is just sitting there? That’s because coconut oil has a lower melting point.
Those lower melting points create a fat that is quite the shapeshifter. If that fat plays the starring oil in a (supposed-to-be-liquid) body oil, when that oil is freshly made and poured, everything is liquid and wonderful—but clearly, it doesn’t always stay that way.
To confirm, I tried it myself. Guided by the ingredient list on the original, I melted together 45% coconut oil, 30% mineral oil, 20% sunflower oil, and 5% bronze mica and poured it into a glass bottle. I then set about trying to mimic what the oil might go through if it was ordered online in at a relatively warm time of year and then lived in a cooler home or apartment.
To approximate what might happen during shipping, I heated it up to about 30°C (86°F)—that’s the oil going from the store to the shipping facility in the summer—and then let it slowly cool back down to room temperature.
I then heated it up again to around 30°C to mimic being out on the trick for delivery. Once the oil “arrived” I let it cool to room temperature and then placed it on a windowsill that was getting down to around 15–17°C (59–63°F) at night and up to 22°C (72°F) or so during the day.
It didn’t take long to find the side of the bottle that was closest to the window lined with solid white lumps. Once the oil warmed back up to room temperature—around 21°C (70°C)—those blobs sunk down, but didn’t vanish.
Gently warming the oil to about 26°C (79°F) did melt the white lumps, but after another night on the windowsill, they were back, and even worse than before. Leaving the oil at room temperature (around 21°C/70°C) for about a week also saw the blobs slowly fade away.
So yes—you can get rid of the lumps but heating the oil or leaving it at a warm-enough temperature for a while. However, if you aren’t a formulator and you’ve spent $80 on a body oil, when you notice highly suspicious white lumps in that body oil, your first instinct is not going to be to microwave it or see if that “mould” goes away after a week. You’re much more likely to take photos, leave a bad review, and throw it out because you think it’s going to give you an infection.
And those suspicious white blobs are just one reason coconut oil makes for a bad ingredient in a body oil! Several reviewers complained that their oil froze solid, making it impossible to use.
Another said “i was really shocked by some of the reviews stating that they couldn’t get the product out of the bottle. For me it was completely opposite. I found it the same texture as pouring oil out of a bottle. I had to give it a good shake to mix it all up. It looked a bit separated.”
I’m betting the customers who struggled with solidification kept their homes cooler than those who described the oil as a thin liquid, while those who experienced graininess kept their homes somewhere in between.
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However this formulation was developed and tested, they obviously didn’t try exposing it to a variety of different ambient temperatures. Frankly, that’s a rookie mistake, and for $80, I expect better (especially since reviews complaining about this go back to 2009!). Even in countries where coconut oil is reliably liquid, someone is going to have their air conditioning set cool enough to cause problems.
As of January 2026, this product is still available for sale on Sephora and the brand’s official website; 2.5oz/74mL is $62USD or $80CAD.
So, lesson learned: don’t use a lots of an oil that easily tips from liquid to solid in a product that’s supposed to be liquid. It’ll solidify and get stuck in the bottle for some customers, while others will be seriously put off by a suspicious (if harmless) chunky mess.
Thankfully, chunky-ness is a pretty easy problem to avoid in shimmery body oils; just stick to liquid oils! The much harder problem to avoid is separation—something else this expensive body oil struggles with. That’s the problem I was working on solving when I found this oil, and you can check out that formulation here. Happy making!
by Marie | Oct 13, 2025 | Essential Reading, Gift Guides
One of my favourite things about being a formulator/one woman DIY skincare factory is sharing the things I make with friends and family. I’m always giving away my creations, but I really ramp it up for the holidays! It’s a great way to save money at an expensive time of year, especially when most people are used to spending $5–25 on something you can make at home for a fraction of the cost.
In this post I’m sharing formulations for some of favourite, tried-and-tested, highly gift-able DIYs along with my top tips and tricks for sharing your handmade creations with your friends & family.
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No more dusty DIYs
I’ve given away hundreds of my handmade skincare creations to friends and family over the years. I’ve gotten lots of wonderful feedback, but I’ve also caught glimpses of years-old handcrafted gifts languishing, dust-covered and unused, on a high shelf in a bathroom (I wasn’t snooping, I promise!).
So, these days, I really try to make sure the things I gift are the sorts of things that’ll actually get used.
If I’m making a big batch of something to have on hand as gifts for all sorts of occasions & people, I gravitate towards products most people already buy and use and probably don’t have super strong opinions about.
If you’ve ever been to someone’s home, think back to the sorts of things you saw out in their bathroom and kitchen, and see if you can give them high quality, handcrafted versions of those things! If there’s a big bottle of St. Ives Vanilla Hand Lotion in their bathroom, try gifting them a lightweight vanilla-scented hand lotion. If every bathroom in their home has a bottle of Bath & Body Works foaming hand wash, whip up some handmade foaming hand wash for them. You get the idea
Hand wash, body lotion, lip balm, and shampoo/body wash bars are pretty safe options for most people. I save more complex/specialty creations like hair masks, peptide face creams, and lactic acid serums for specific people I know will use and appreciate them.
Write it down!
Make sure you label everything you gift so your recipients aren’t left with a mystery jar of… something… when the holiday dust clears.
Include:
- What it is (hand lotion, foot cream, etc.)
- Instructions for use, if the “what” doesn’t make it really obvious
- Any special care instructions (e.g. “don’t leave anywhere hot”, “keep dry”, etc.)
- All the ingredients (e-mailing or texting these afterwards might be the best option if you aren’t set up to design & print labels—especially tiny ones)
Other ‘rules of thumb’
I usually stick to lighter/non-greasy/fast-absorbing formulations. I know some people love heavier, richer products, but my friends and family aren’t those people.
Since the scent of a product can make (or break) it, I usually choose classic, relatively non-polarizing scents (e.g. citrus, mint, and vanilla), and use them at low levels. Leaving things unscented (or just letting the natural scent of ingredients like cocoa butter and coconut oil shine through) is also a good option.
Also: pay attention to maximum usage levels for fragrances & essential oils! Some very Christmassy essential oils—like cinnamon bark and clove—have very low safe usage rates.
Remember restrictions/preferences like allergies, vegan/vegetarianism (especially with the popularity of tallow skincare these days!), and religious considerations when selecting formulations to gift.
Make it home from the holidays
If your gift will have to do some travelling, be it in the mail or in a suitcase, make sure it’ll get there in one piece.
- Avoid formulations that will be ruined if they freeze or melt in a non-temperature-controlled delivery truck.
- Leave room for expansion so freezing won’t cause the bottle/tube/etc. to burst.
- Choose packaging that is unlikely to break (and/or bubble wrap it well).
- Test your bottles & closures for leaks, and do everything you can to prevent them (wrap threads in plumber’s tape, package bottles in plastic bags, etc.)
I really like solid formulations for things that’ll have to travel—shampoo/body wash bars, lip balm, and powder-to-foam products are all great options!
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Some of my favourite gift-able formulations
Hand creams & lotions
Body creams & lotions
Anhydrous body butters
Emulsified body butters
Hand wash
Body wash
Shampoo/body wash bars
Lip balms, butters, and masks
Bath treats (scrubs, bath bombs, bath oils, bath salts)
by Marie | Oct 6, 2025 | Essential Reading
Over the last 15 years I’ve spent far more money than I care to admit on DIY ingredients… and I’ve also thrown away a truly embarrassing number of bottles, baggies, and tubs of expired or useless ingredients. While I’m not thrilled about all that wasted money, it did teach me some lessons—and hopefully I can save you some money by sharing them.
So, without further ado, here are six DIY skincare ingredients you do not need—especially when you first get started.
The fancy temptation
This is definitely the ingredient category I get the most post-purchase questions about and I GET IT. Fancy actives are so alluring, especially if you’re moving into DIYing after spending big bucks on fancy peptide serums and vitamin creams.
It’s so easy to find the star peptide or vitamin from an expensive store bought cream, buy it with the notion of DIYing your own version, and then two weeks later you’ve got two teaspoons of an ultra-precious liquid that you’re not sure how to use.
Peptides are an especially tempting fancy ingredient
What am I talking about when I say “fancy” active? As a maker, I’d say it’s some something you’re sort of scared to use. That could be because it’s really expensive, or because you’re not sure how to use it—either because the instructions are intimidating, or just because you’ve got no idea where to start.
So, what do you do if you want to work with fancy ingredients?
One: develop and hone your research skills. When you can research, you can figure out how to use ANY ingredient.
Learn more:
Two: you need some experience with less expensive ingredients under your belt. Experience will make you more confident that you can do a fancy ingredient justice. Combined with research skills, you’ll go from “I’m kinda of scared to use this” to “I’m not totally sure this will work, but I know I’m starting from a good place, so let’s get making!”
Of course there will always be ingredients you’ll find worryingly expensive, but you’re far less likely to buy something pricey and leave it to rot on a shelf when you’ve got solid research skills and some good experience under your belt!
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Where on earth am I supposed to put this?
I still mess up on this front every now and then thanks to the unavoidable ambiguity of ordering ingredients online.
It could be gigantic jugs (or drums) of oil that were a WAY better price per ounce than a smaller bottle—something that seemed reasonable when it was just a number on a screen, but when it shows up, it’s way larger than you thought it would be.
I bought this cupboard months after ordering those giant jugs of oil at the bottom
It could be ingredients that have to live in the fridge, but you don’t have any fridge space to spare.
Maybe it’s something that’s super light and fluffy, so it takes up WAY more room than you thought they would when you ordered them. I recently ordered a kilo of silica, and it turns out that fills a bag the size of a large throw pillow. Oops.
I’ll be the first to admit that my storage solutions have grown to accommodate my ever-expanding collection of ingredients, packaging, and “under surveillance” formulations, but this does mean formulating-related parts of my home are always one ingredient order away from sheer madness.
So, before you add something to your cart, think about whether or not you have a suitable home for it. If you’re anything like me if probably won’t stop you, but at least you thought about it, right?
Nothing lasts forever
In my experience, new makers buy way too many essential oils. I know I did! In my early making days I spent hours reading the reviews on New Directions Aromatics and adding dozens of bottles of promising essential oils to my cart. I quickly built up a gigantic collection of essential oils that I couldn’t hope to use before they expired.
Essential oils are natural products that change with time. A few—like patchouli—get better with age, but most don’t. Old, oxidized essential oils don’t smell the same as they did when they were fresh, and oxidization creates compounds in that can be harmful to skin and increase the chances of negative reactions.
According to Tisserand, “Most essential oils keep well for at least 1-2 years”. I know that sounds like a long time (it certainly did to me when I was buying every essential oil in sight, confident I could finish them all in a year or two)—but if you’re only making small batches for yourself and you’re following safe (and usually low) usage rates, you’re probably not going to finish a dozen bottles of essential oil quickly enough.
Speaking of usage rates: essential oils are very chemically complex and each one is unique—meaning every essential oil has its own safe usage rate, and some very popular, familiar essential oils have really low safe usage levels (sob). So, if you don’t know how to research and calculate those safe levels—especially when blending multiple essential oils—I think it’s safer to go without.
Learn more: How to naturally scent lotions with essential oils and natural fragrance oils
Of course I know many (most, even) people will still want to use essential oils in their skincare, and I 100% understand! They are lovely ingredients and can be used to create gorgeous products. Just make sure you treat them like the potent, complex ingredients they are. Do lots of research, buy small bottles, store them somewhere cool and dark, and choose essential oils with relatively forgiving safe usage rates like lavender, peppermint, rosemary, spearmint, and sweet orange.
But it’s 75% off…
This might be the most seductive one yet—it’s certainly proven irresistible to yours truly far too many times. It’s those “last chance”/ clearance ingredients. The ones a company is selling off at a massive discount because they’re discontinuing it.
Ingredients are discontinued all the time for all sorts of reasons.
It could be that the manufacturer has stopped making it all together, so even if it’s really popular, the supplier can no longer get it. If that’s the case and you already know you adore this ingredient and have several formulations that rely on it, definitely stock up!
But… if you’ve never used the ingredient before, you should probably save your money. If you fall in love with it you won’t be able to get more. And if you try to head off that possibility by ordering a ton, you’ll be stuck with lots if you don’t like it. (Or even if you do like it, honestly. New Directions Aromatics discontinued their zeolite clay around 2013, and I loved it so I stocked up… I think I still have 3kg of untouched zeolite clay at the back of a cupboard somewhere ).
I’m learned the hard (and expensive) way that sometimes an ingredient is discontinued because it’s not very popular, and for good reason. Every time I’ve ordered a new-to-me discontinued/clearance essential oil, the first sniff has made it very clear why it was discontinued!
That’s a butter?
This isn’t a hard “no”, but a “be aware”.
If you’ve ever seen a butter for sale and thought “huh, I didn’t know that plant made a butter”—something like aloe, strawberry, or hemp butter—chances are good that ingredient was actually a pseudo butter.
Pseudo butters are made by blending some sort of neutral buttery base (often inexpensive hydrogenated oils that aren’t too different from vegetable shortening) with extracts, fragrances, essential oils, and/or carrier oils to create something butter-y that isn’t a “true” butter like shea or cocoa butter.
There’s nothing wrong with these faux butters, but you should be aware of how similar they can be to one another. New Directions Aromatics sells over 30 different pseudo butters, but if you look more closely you’ll see they’re all mostly (often 90%+) “non-GMO soybean butter”. If you want to try some of these butters, go for it, but don’t order a ton of them until you’re certain you like the feel of the base, because that’s mostly what you’re getting.
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Bare butters
My last “save your money” ingredient is a continuation of the butters discussion, and one I expect some people will disagree with.
Tread carefully with unrefined butters because they can have strong smells that you might not like, or just might not want in everything you make.
I adore unrefined cocoa butter, but it has a very distinct chocolate-y smell that will come through in your creations. That can be delicious, but even my cocoa-besotted self will admit that the smell of chocolate doesn’t pair well with everything (cocoa butter + tea tree oil = blech).
These are shea seeds!
I’ve received SO many comments over the years from people who’ve ordered lots of unrefined shea butter only to discover it smells nothing like the beloved shea butter lotion that inspired the purchase. In my opinion, the smell of unrefined (or raw) shea butter is harder to work with than raw cocoa butter. Raw shea is smokey, fatty, and a bit nutty, and that smell is pretty assertive. If your shea is unrefined and you’re making a body butter with it, that body butter is going to smell like raw shea butter.
You can add essential oils, but that will create a product that smells like raw shea butter plus lavender/mint/rosemary/etc.; that shea scent is not going to vanish because you added an essential oil.
So, if you aren’t certain you like the smell of a raw butter and want that smell as part of your products, I think it’s best to get refined versions because they’re much more versatile.
What ingredient(s) do you wish you’d passed on?
by Marie | Sep 22, 2025 | Articles, Essential Reading
Humblebee & Me turns 14 today! If it was a person, Humblebee & Me would’ve just started the 9th grade and could now get their driving learner’s permit (where I’m from, at least).
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In the last fourteen years, Humblebee & Me has gone from being a blog I worked on in my free time to all my creative pursuits (photography, DIY skincare, cooking, book binding, costuming, and more) to my full time job. I’ve learned so much about formulating, business, teaching, and myself since 2011, and I’m grateful every single day that I get to spend so much time doing what I love and sharing it with people like you who love it, too.
To celebrate nearly a decade and a half of sharing my DIYs with the world, I’ve brainstormed up fourteen important formulating lessons that I wish I’d learned earlier; hopefully they’ll save you lots of time and money!
(more…)
by Marie | Aug 18, 2025 | Conditioner, Starter DIYs - Level 3
In this post I’m sharing how to make three different emulsified, rinse-out Super Simple Lightweight Hair Conditioner formulations using a conditioning emulsifier that is perfect for fine hair that is easily weighed down. All three formulations are easy to make, and each builds on the one before it: the first requires just four ingredients, the second formulation adds two more, and the third adds another three. Let’s dive in!
The partner video tutorial for this project is focussed a lot more on technique and showing you the consistencies of the finished conditioners, while this post focuses more on the ingredients and formulation. Watch and read for the best learning experience!
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What is hair conditioner?
I’ve written a lot more about what hair conditioner is in this post: Super Simple Creamy Hair Conditioner: 3 Ways. Read that post for a longer explanation!
For a short version, though: creamy hair conditioners are emulsions the include at least one cationic (aka positively charged) ingredient—that’s the conditioning magic. They can be very simple (just a fatty alcohol, cationic emulsifier, water, preservative, and perhaps a humectant) or more complex (including ingredients like carrier oils, esters, hydrolyzed proteins, amino acids, botanical extracts, and more).
Rinse-out conditioners are applied to the hair for a few minutes after shampooing, and then rinsed out. They leave our hair smooth, slippery, and easy to comb through—which helps reduce breakage, improving hair health.
Version 1
This ultra-simple, very lightweight version requires just four ingredients!
The ingredients
This ingredient (also known as Cola®Lac SLB or Bio Conditioner) does several jobs: it emulsifies, it conditions, and it thickens.
The unique, lovely-for-hair ingredient in Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner is Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate.
Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine is a really common ingredient in hair conditioners, hair masks, cleansing conditioners, and conditioning shampoos. It’s the primary conditioning emulsifier in Hair Story’s New Wash and can be found in tons of products from brands like Aussie, Pantene, Aveda, Wella, Schwarzkopf, Herbal Essences, and more. It is prized for conditioning without weighing the hair down, which is why you can find it in lots of products designed for fine hair. Products marketed towards textured hair or as richer/more conditioning tend to blend Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine with other conditioning ingredients like Behentrimonium Chloride and Behentrimonium Methosulfate (as found in BTMS-50 and BTMS-25).
You can think of Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner as an easy-to-use format of Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine.
On its own, Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine is very basic (has a high pH) and needs to be neutralized with an acid in order to condition and emulsify, which can make it a bit intimidating to work with. Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate is the lactate salt form of Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine; aka Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine that’s already been neutralized with lactic acid—so we don’t have do that part!
The three component ingredients of Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner:
stearamidopropyl dimethylamine, lactic acid, and cetearyl alcohol.
This pre-neutralized version of Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine is blended with cetearyl alcohol; a fatty thickener and emollient that boosts viscosity, stabilizes emulsions, and moisturizes the hair. It’s a really common ingredient in all kinds of haircare and skincare formulations, and is found in all sorts of emulsifiers (examples include Emulsifying Wax NF, Ritamulse SCG, and BTMS-25).
I like to grind my Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner up in my DIY-only coffee grinder to make it even easier to work with. I recommend freezing it first (make sure it’s nice and frosty) so the heat from the friction of grinding doesn’t fuse it into a gummy mass.
Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner is not very widely available as of summer 2025; the only place I’ve found it for sale to home crafters is YellowBee in Canada.
If you don’t have Bio Conditioner you can use BTMS-25 or BTMS-50 in these formulations instead, but they won’t be quite as well suited to fine hair, and will definitely be different.
Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCT aka Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride)
This is a super stable, lightweight, liquid emollient that adds a tiny bit of richness to the conditioner, and is emulsified with the Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner.
If you don’t have it, you can choose any oil (or blend of oils) that you like. From a haircare point of view, you might want to specifically choose oils that soak into the hair (which helps soften it and add water-repellency), oils that coat it (to add shine and gloss), or a blend. Learn more about that from the Science-y Hair Blog here.
Distilled water
This is our diluent and solvent—it’s the key thing that makes this a creamy, emulsified conditioner rather than a not-very-good conditioner bar. It also dilutes the Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner and the Medium Chain Triglycerides, dialling in the level of richness (which in the case of this particular formulation isn’t very rich at all!).
Liquid Germall™ Plus
Liquid Germall™ Plus is our broad spectrum preservative; it keeps the hair conditioner from going mouldy and getting disgusting!
You could use a different broad spectrum preservative, but you need to be sure it is compatible with cationics and that you meet its needs (pH being a big one!). You will likely need to use more of it as well as Liquid Germall™ Plus has a uniquely low usage rate. Learn more about the pH needs & usage rates of different preservatives here.
I did experiment with Optiphen™ Plus as I was working on these formulations and found the phenoxyethanol in it thinned the emulsions a lot, so keep that in mind if you choose a preservative that includes phenoxyethanol.
Formulation #1
The Formulation
Super Simple Lightweight Hair Conditioner #1
Heated phase
91.5g | 91.5% distilled water
2g | 2% medium chain triglycerides (USA / Canada / UK / Aus / NZ)
6g | 6% Bio Conditioner (Canada)
Cool down phase
0.5g | 0.5% Liquid Germall Plus™ (USA / Canada)
Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer on a stove top over low to medium-low heat in a wide, flat-bottomed sauté pan.
Alternatively, you can use a lab hot plate on low. If you use beakers, you can set them directly on the hot plate without a water bath—just take care not to boil your formulation! Aim for a maximum heat of 75–80°C.
Weigh the heated water phase into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup or glass beaker. Weigh the entire lot (measuring cup/beaker + ingredients) and write that weight down for later.
Heat the heated phase with the prepared hot water bath/hot plate.
After 30–40 minutes everything should be hot, and you should see a white creamy top layer. Remove the water bath from the heat and weigh the heated phase. Add enough distilled water to bring the weight back up to what it was before heating.
Grab your immersion blender and begin blending the conditioner, starting with short bursts so the still-very-liquid emulsion doesn’t whirl up and spray everywhere. Blend for 30–60 seconds before switching to hand stirring. You’ll need to be fairly diligent with the stirring at first or the emulsion will separate, but once the mixture has thickened up a bit and is uniform you can switch to stirring occasionally.
When the outside of the glass measuring cup is just warm to the touch (40°C or cooler, if you have a thermometer) we’re ready to proceed.
Now it’s time to incorporate our cool down ingredients. Because cool down ingredients are typically present at very low amounts you’ll need to use an accurate scale—preferably one accurate to 0.01g. As these more accurate scales tend to have fairly low (100–200g) maximum weights, you won’t be able to put the entire batch of lotion on that scale without blowing it out. So—grab a smaller bowl or beaker. Weigh the cool down ingredients into that, using the more accurate scale. Add a scoop or two of conditioner, stir to thoroughly incorporate, and then stir all of that back into the parent batch of conditioner. Doing it this way minimizes the amount of cool down ingredients lost to the smaller bowl/beaker.
Once the cool down phase has been incorporated, all that’s left to do is package it up!
Package in some sort of squeeze or pump bottle—something you can store in the shower without contaminating it with a bunch of extra water. Use as you’d use any rinse-out cream conditioner. Enjoy!
Make sure you can’t see any blobs of Bio Conditioner (see those little translucent round bits on my spatula?) before removing your beaker from the heat and blending.
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Version 2
This version incorporates some extra oil for a bit more richness, a fragrance (or essential oil) for scent, and a wee bit of panthenol (Vitamin B5) for added moisture and shine. The amount of water is reduced to make room for these new ingredients. If you don’t have any of the additional ingredients from here on out, you can replace them with distilled water.
The extra ingredients
Half a percent of powdered vitamin B5 helps moisturize the hair and boost shine. It’s an easy-to-use, versatile ingredient—if you don’t already have some, I highly recommend adding 30g (1.06oz) or so to your next ingredient order.
Fragrance
Just a little of something that smells lovely so the conditioner—and your hair—smell lovely, too. You could use an essential oil instead if you prefer, just be sure whatever you use is safe at 0.2% in rinse-off hair formulations (IFRA category 7A).
Learn more: How to naturally scent lotions with essential oils and natural fragrance oils
Formulation #2
The Formulation
Super Simple Lightweight Hair Conditioner #2
Heated phase
86.8g | 86.8% distilled water
6g | 6% medium chain triglycerides (USA / Canada / UK / Aus / NZ)
0.5g | 0.5% panthenol powder (vitamin B5) (USA / Canada)
6g | 6% Bio Conditioner (Canada)
Cool down phase
0.5g | 0.5% Liquid Germall Plus™ (USA / Canada)
0.2g | 0.2% fragrance oil or essential oil of choice
Follow the same instructions we used for Formulation #1.
Version 3
This version of the formulation gets a bit richer with even more oil and a touch of shea butter, plus it includes another good-for-hair ingredient to really boost the performance of the conditioner.
Richness boost
A bit more Medium Chain Triglycerides and a touch of shea butter further boosts richness and viscosity. As with earlier versions, you can use different liquid oils and/or a different butter if desired.
Because this third formulation includes shea butter, which can oxidize, I’ve included some Tocopherol (Vitamin E)—an antioxidant. You could absolutely include this in the other formulations as well, but I didn’t because Medium Chain Triglycerides is such a stable ingredient and I was trying to keep the ingredient lists as short as possible.
Hydrolyzed rice protein
Our last ingredient is 1% Hydrolyzed Rice Protein. My hair really loves protein; it helps structure my waves and reduce frizz.
If you don’t have hydrolyzed rice protein there are quite a few other hydrolyzed proteins that could work instead. They all have different benefits ranging from protecting the hair to volumizing to moisturizing! Learn more here:
If you don’t have a hydrolyzed protein you could use a botanical extract or a humectant like Vegetable Glycerin or Propanediol 1,3 instead!
Formulation #3
The Formulation
Super Simple Lightweight Hair Conditioner #3
Heated phase
79.7g | 79.7% distilled water
10g | 10% medium chain triglycerides (USA / Canada / UK / Aus / NZ)
2g | 2% refined shea butter (USA / Canada)
0.5g | 0.5% panthenol powder (vitamin B5) (USA / Canada)
6g | 6% Bio Conditioner (Canada)
Cool down phase
0.5g | 0.5% Liquid Germall Plus™ (USA / Canada)
0.2g | 0.2% fragrance oil or essential oil of choice
0.1g | 0.1% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
0.5g | 0.5% hydrolyzed rice protein (USA / Canada)
Follow the same instructions we used for Formulation #1.
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Other Questions
Can I use BTMS-50 or BTMS-25 instead?
Yes, but…
If you want to use BTMS-25, I’d recommend following the formulations in this post instead.
Behentrimonium methosulfate (that’s what “BTMS” stands for) is also conditioning, but it’s not as lightweight as Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine is. Both BTMS-25 and BTMS-50 are conditioning emulsifiers and will work in these formulations to create creamy hair conditioners, but they will not produce the same product. Think of it like using a sweet potato instead of a white potato—they can do a lot of the same jobs, but they aren’t identical and you will notice the swap.
How long will these conditioners last? What is their shelf life?
Because these hair conditioners contain water, you must include a broad-spectrum preservative to ward off microbial growth. This is non-optional. With good manufacturing practice and proper preservation, these conditioners should last at least a year.
In the event you notice any change in colour, scent, or texture, chuck it out and make a fresh batch.
Is Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner natural?
It’s not fully natural, but according to Colonial Chem, “Cola®Lac SLB is “Derived Natural” with a Natural Origin Index of 0.97 in accordance with ISO 16128 guideline.” The ingredient that brings this down from a “fully natural” score of 1 is the Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine, which gets a rating of ~0.75 on its own.
Whether this is natural enough for you is a personal decision.
What about pH?
Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner is quite acidic, so the pH of all these conditioners falls in the 4.8–5.5 range as written.
I made & tested dozens of simple formulations using Bio Conditioner to put this video together, and the pH of everything I made fell in the 4.2–5.5 range.
It’s always a good idea to check the pH of your formulations if you have a pH meter, but if you don’t have one yet and you make these formulations as written—or relatively close to it—the pH should land in a good place automatically.
Learn more: pH and Your Hair. A little redox to make you happy. from Science-y Hair Blog
Can I use Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine instead of Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner?
Please read the free Humblebee & Me DIY Encyclopedia entry on Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner for more information on this, but generally: yes, but I would not consider that to be a beginner friendly swap as you’ll need to make several other modifications + additions to the formulations as well.
Can I use a different preservative?
Please read the section on Liquid Germall™ Plus (under Formulation #1) above.
Relevant links & further reading
Gifting Disclosure
The BioConditioner, fractionated coconut oil, panthenol (Vitamin B5), fragrance, vitamin E, hydrolyzed rice protein, and Liquid Germall™ Plus were gifted by YellowBee.
The refined shea butter was gifted by Bramble Berry.
Links to Amazon are affiliate links.
by Marie | Mar 10, 2025 | Articles
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