Sadly, I don’t get out to the ocean all that often. It is, in my defense, nearly 1000km to the nearest one, and that would make for a very long bike ride, so I feel like I’m not exactly slacking in the ocean department. Anyhow, this shampoo smells like the ocean side, but… nicer. Less rotting seaweed, more bright lemongrass with mellow, organic undertones of seaweedy goodness. It’s like going for a swim in the sea, minus the sticky ocean water.
Seaweed contains vitamins A & C, as well as lots of beneficial minerals. Seaweed is also a natural moisturizer, and it has great detoxing properties. It’s great for the skin and is said to help with dandruff. And, perhaps best of all, seaweed is said to help with hair growth, by encouraging thick, lustrous hair. Awesome!
Lemongrass & Seaweed Shampoo
35% olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
25% refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
15% lard
15% unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada)
10% castor oil (USA / Canada)Per 500g (1.1lbs) oils:
- 30g lemongrass essential oil
- 1 tbsp white white kaolin clay (USA / Canada)
- 1 tbsp seaweed powder
Follow my standard soap making instructions, calculating for lye with a 6% superfat. I divided the batch into two parts after adding the essential oil and clay, and stir the seaweed into one half to get the layered effect.
You make gorgeous pictures!
What a healthy recipe! Thanks for sharing your recipe!
Thanks for reading, Natalia! Enjoy 🙂
This shampoo bar looks great, I bet it smells fantastic!
Thanks, Anna—I sure like it 🙂
Loved this recipe! It was so easy with the room temperature method. Instead of the layered look, I swirled the different colored batters together in the main bowl and poured into my mold. It’s so pretty!
I’m so thrilled to hear it! Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making 🙂
My mother and I have both been using homemade liquid shampoo on our waist-length hair for the past five months or so. We use an ACV rinse after washing, and wash every other day. While my hair has only gotten better (no tangles at all, sooo soft and shiny), hers has gotten unbearably tangled, so much so that she can’t even brush it!Neither of us have any idea why or what to do! Do you have any suggestions?
Sorry to butt in, but you might like to check out the folks at Chagrin Valley – they are very knowledgable about natural haircare!
Thanks so much Jane!
Found an article on Chagrin Valley’s website about how hard water effects hair…looks like that could be the problem. I think I’ll have Mom do a chelating rinse with a citric acid in water solution, and then start saving rain water for her to wash her hair in from then on…
Great detective work, Emerald—how did the rinse work out for your mom?
Thanks, Jane—what a great resource!
Just to throw in my two cents; you might try a detangling rinse 🙂 I know as my hair “detoxed” and all the silicone came out, it sure tangled a lot more, with big white flecks of silicone in it (down around my collarbone, nowhere near my scalp, so I know it wasn’t deodorant). Once that passed, my hair had more texture and tangled more easily. So, I made a detangling rinse and that really helps! Good luck 🙂
Cool! I’m gonna try this one out for sure! And pin it.
XX
Ruth
Awesome, thanks Ruth!
i am doing my best to fling off the nasty shampoo and conditioners from the store and embrace shampoo bars. so far, it really isn’t working for me and it makes me fume. i seem to get a big grease patch on the back of my head! i don’t know if it is the brand that i bought or me. i do not feel like it is my scrubbing technique….. i have waist-length hair that is more on the thickish side. any way you could point me in the right direction?
i am in love with your blog btw – so inspiring and full of my favorite things! i just got my herbs for the acv hair rinse. wahoo!!
Hi Andrea! Since you’re saying the greasy patch is only on the back of your head, it sounds like this is a technique problem, not a problem with the shampoo. I totally get it—I’ve got thick, waist length hair as well, and it took me a while to learn how to shampoo it all with a bar, and then to get into the habit of doing it every single time. Alternatively, if you are paying a ton of shampooing attention to that greasy patch, you may actually have a ton of extra soap left in your hair back there 😛 Do a “squeak test” (pinch a few strands of hair together and do a short, sharp tug—you should hear the hair squeak as your fingers move if it is clean of soap). Also, don’t do your ACV on your roots—that’ll make your hair look greasy faster.
Another thought… any chance you have an absent minded habit of playing with the hair on the back of your head (especially after applying lotion), or perhaps you are wearing a favourite hat that could be quite dirty? External sources of oil are also a possibility here.
Hope that helps! If you think I’m wrong, feel free to give me some more details and I’ll see if I can think of anything else.
Okay well I have had a HUGE problem with my hair getting oily. Literally I could take a shower at night and I’d wake up in the morning and it’d be greasy. I now take showers in the morning to avoid that problem. but after a day, my hair would look really gross. So I tried to find things that would help and I found this banana hair mask that helps tons! I put it in my hair, and washed it out and my hair hasn’t gotten greasy looking in 5 days! it’s awesome! it has 1 mashed banana, 1 full egg, 3 tbsp. honey, 3 tbsp. milk and 5 tbsp. olive oil. I put it in my hair for 15-30 minutes and then washed it out, like I said, and I love it! I just wanted to share that with you 🙂
if you don’t mash the banana up all the way you WILL regret it.
Do you do the banana mask daily or only periodically? Do you shampoo in between uses?
Well I would use it once every two weeks and then I use then “healthy sexy hair” shampoo about every other day in between
Wow, thanks for the tip, Morgan, this is fantastic! I wonder why this works… hmm… whenever I add oil to my hair (anything other than the ends) I end up having a super hard time getting it all out with my natural shampoo and then I risk looking oilier than normal for a few wash cycles. Any theories? This is so cool!
The shampoo bar looks wonderful, and I cannot wait to start making CP soap….wait a minute, did you say wasabi roasted nori? OmG! Do you have a recipe for that?
Yay! I’m always excited to hear about somebody getting into making their own soap 😀 Come to the dark side! We have bubbles! As for the wasabi roasted seaweed—it’s easy to buy at any Asian grocery store in the snack aisle, but I am definitely working on my own recipe as well 🙂 Omnomnom!
Am wondering if you’ve ever made soap with tea? How would that affect the soap? Or is it just considered as the liquid portion instead of simply water?
I’ve seen recipes for chai tea soap on pinterest and in this soap book I have. You can search pinterest now. You should try it. God! I need to put parental controls on my computer and lock myself out of the internet so I can get some housework done today! 😛
Good luck with the tea soap! 😛
How funny you should say that—I made a chai tea soap a few weeks ago, I’ll be posting about it soon!
You totally can! I’ve made soaps with green tea and black tea before—you just use the cooled tea instead of water for mixing in the lye. I can’t say I’ve ever really noticed a change in the final product; it mostly just sounds nice when you tell people it’s a soap tea 😛 The black tea makes the raw soap quite dark, but it totally lightened up during saponification.
Hi Marie, I can’t wait to try out this shampoo too! Where can I get the seaweed powder? Just get seaweed from grocery store? doesn’t it come with preservatives? Thanks for your help!
I got mine from New Directions Aromatics 🙂 I don’t recommend eating it!
hey:) can I use green clay instead on white kaolin clay?
it’s my favorite kind of clay since I have oily skin on my face and oily hair!
You definitely can, just be prepared for the final product to be a different colour (of course) 😉 Let me know how it goes!
Marie, I’d love to make one of your shampoo bars, but it is beyond my ability to use the calculator. Would you be able to provide a ready-to-make recipe please. I don’t know, this math thing scares me lol.
Regards, Danka
Hi Danka! I assure you, you can definitely use a calculator—if I can, you can! No math required, I promise 🙂 Plus, you really do need to learn how to do the calculating yourself—you should never take somebody’s word on the amount of lye. Always, for your own safety, calculate or re-calculate every soap recipe you make.
You just enter in the ingredients, the percentages, and the final amount, and the calculator does all the work! This is my favourite calculator. Here’s the help documentation for it if you need it 🙂
Oh Marie! I don’t know what I did wrong? I made the normal shampoo recipe (my 4th batch now). I added a little honey, kaolin clay, lemon grass essential oil, sweet orange essential oil and lavender essential oil. Other than that, I did everything exactly the same. Too much honey? not enough mixing? I don’t know? I put it outside to harden up. Covered it with cling wrap and wrapped it in a towel to insulate. I went out an hour or so later to peek, and it exploded! I have soap all over the outside of my mold. I scraped it up, put it back in and the soap is all oily (liquid) inside the mold. Not even hardening at all. (except the exploded part that landed outside the mold). Any ideas what I did wrong? Has this ever happened to you?
It sounds like you have encountered the elusive soap volcano! This is probably because of the honey + too much heat. Honey makes soap saponify very hot, so you shouldn’t be insulating, and I’d recommend soaping at room temperature, and not insulating your mould at all in the future. I’d wait a full 24 hours and see if it does end up hardening up… from what I’ve read, it should still work, it’ll just be a bit ugly 😛
I just have to say how much I love your site! I have been frequenting it for the past few months trying to get brave enough to start DIY in soaps and skin care. I have decided that I would try this soap as my first soap making adventure. I want to make sure I am excited about what I am making and this recipe has seaweed in it! I love asian cooking and I try to cook with seaweed all the time. . . Any ways to the point, I wanted to make sure I am purchasing the correct Kaolin Clay. I found this on NDA
, I am hoping this is the right one. . .
Hi Gabi! Thanks so much for your kind words 🙂 And yes, that is exactly the right clay!
Hey Marie,
I will be trying this recipe this weekend as my first foray into soaping. In the recipe you say lard instead of tallow. did you actually use pig in stead of cow here? any hints for a noob to minimize disaster? Thanks!
Hi Mary! I often use lard (pig fat) and tallow (cow fat) interchangeably, depending on what I have on hand. Tallow makes a slightly harder bar, but I’ve never found the end results to be hugely different. Have fun, prep and measure your ingredients ahead of time, and try not to worry too much!
Can I use Kelp Powder for the Seaweed?
Yes; the seaweed is kelp powder 🙂