Lotion!

Glad you like my spatula Marie! I’m with you….I love those spatulas! Last time I purchased them, I think I bought about 20 of them. They really are perfect when crafting.😀

I thought about the extracts, but this lotion works for me really well during the wintertime. I don’t mess with the recipe too much other than trying different oil combinations. I’ll go wild with the extracts when I start my production of spring lotions. I can try a lot of different things in lotion when my skin is not so cranky.

I don’t usually have a problem with the SBT oil staining, but my last bottle was not so strongly colored! I’ll try to remember to massage it in well.

Thank you about the countertops!😊

Yes, Cyn, the guar gobbledegook is a guar derivative of guar gum. It’s in the co-wash I’m trying to dupe, but all I have is regular guar. I don’t think I want regular guar in a co-wash. I’ve read it coats the hair shaft and is hard to remove without sulfates. I spent two painful, itchy months detoxing my hair and scalp from sulfates and silicones so I really don’t want to screw that up!

The guar derivative (proper INCI name guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride, whew! What a mouthful!) adds conditioning properties. I have some polyquaternium 7 and polyquaternium 10 that I may add instead.

Yes, I’m trying to dupe Curl Junkie’s Daily Fix. That’s my favorite co-wash! I’ll keep y’all posted.

I looked at the ingredient list on your co-wash and I’d like to point out a few things I noticed. One, it has isopropyl alcohol in it. I do the Curly Girl method and that is one of the ingredients they say to avoid in any hair products because it’s drying to the hair. Two, glycerin is pretty high on the ingredient list. If you live in a dry climate or if the weather is dry due to winter, the glycerin will actually work the opposite of the way you want it to. Normally glycerin will pull moisture from the air to hydrate your hair. In dry weather and climates, the glycerin will pull the moisture from your hair to deposit it in the air, causing dryness. The third, aloe vera is drying to my hair, I’ve noticed and aloe vera is the second ingredient in your co-wash. Sometimes I put aloe on my hair if I don’t wash it that day to help perk up the curls. Every time I do, it feels like straw the next day. That is just my personal experience, but I have noticed on various blog posts that other curly girls say they experience this too. Maybe your hair doesn’t like aloe vera either and it’s contributing to the dryness problem.

Something else, are you only using this to cleanse your hair or are you cleansing with this and shampooing your hair once a week, for example? My experience with just co-washing is that I can do it for a week, but after 6 or 7 days, my hair and scalp is just blah and gross. I have to shampoo to make it feel clean and perk up my curls, or they just get weighted down.

In the winter, I also massage a few drops of argan oil mixed with sea buckthorn oil on my scalp daily to battle the dryness I get with the winter air. This had worked out really well this winter and I’ve had no flaking and very little itching.

Shampoo and surfactants are not bad or evil, you just need to find what best suits your hair and scalp’s needs. For me, it’s co-wash all week, but shampoo once a week. I use non-sulfate shampoos most of the time for my once a week shampoo. If I’m deep conditioning and putting a protein treatment on my hair, I do use a sulfate shampoo occasionally to totally strip my hair of any build up I may have. I’ve not had any issues or problems doing this, and I think my curls actually do better with an occasional clarifying (sulfate) shampoo.

Sorry! I know this is long but, like DIYing your own products, I’m obsessed with the Curly Girl method for hair. I hope this info helps!🙂

I am wavy too, with fine texture and normal to high porosity. I haven’t done anything “chemical” to my hair (I used to get highlights) since starting Curly Girl and that’s been two years now, so my high porosity must be due to genetics. I have to be very careful with heavy oils and butters on my hair too because it gets weighted down easily. My hair thrives on this method but it took a while to find my groove, what worked, what didn’t. Before I started, my scalp was very oily and the ends of my hair were dry, dry, dry! When I started co-washing more and shampooing less, my scalp wasn’t oily anymore, and in the winter it became dry and itchy! Last winter it started flaking, it was so bad. That’s when I started with the argan on my scalp. I literally put 3-4 drops on my fingertips, rub them together, then rub into my scalp. Not much at all but it makes a world of difference. I have a small 1/2 ounce bottle I fill with argan, then drop either a drop of tea tree and a drop of rosemary, or a couple of drops of sea buckthorn oil into the argan. A friend of mine was having the same itchy, flaky scalp issue, so I started her on the argan oil too. She was amazed how much it helped and now does it religiously. Just start with a couple of drops of argan and see if it helps your scalp.

Something that helps an itchy scalp (if you’re itchy too, that is!) is taking 1 tablespoon of brown sugar or quinoa and 3 tablespoons of conditioner to make a scalp scrub. Scrub your scalp then cleanse. That’s in Lorraine Massey’s book and that just feels GOOD! LOrraine Massey is the one who wrote the Curly Girl Handbook and started the whole Curly Girl, no poo and low poo methods. She is not responsible for the no poo with baking soda trend, however.😋

If it’s just your scalp that’s dry, but your hair is doing well with the co-wash, I wouldn’t add any oil to the co-wash. You will definitely get greasy hair! It sounds like your scalp is like mine. The dry air in winter irritates it. 😱