What Is The "General" Recipe For Making A DIY Shampoo With Proper Surfactants?

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Now that you know "What Ingredients Go Into Making A Shampoo?" You probably want the formula for making one:

You'll be creating two bain maries (aka double boilers) so you need two glass bowls or pyrex dishes.

Method:

My recipes will always give you the ingredients in two lists "Heated Phase" and "Cool-Down Phase".

1. Put all the heated phase ingredients into a bain marie (you can heat the water in a microwave and add it already hot to accelerate the process)
2. When everything has dissolved stir to mix
3. Leave on the heat for about 2 minutes then remove and allow to cool
4. When the mixture cools down to slightly more than hand-hot (i.e. very warm to touch) add all the cool-down phase ingredients
5. Let the mixture cool down completely then check the pH and the consistency. If the mixture is too thin, thicken it with crothix liquid. If the pH is higher than 5.5, reduce to 5.5 using citric acid. If you want to thicken with Xanthan Gel there is an adjusted recipe in the Shampoo Ingredients List and The Shampoo Course Book.
   

You can't currently find crothix liquid in the in the UK so I import it from the US. Xanthan gum can get very annoying to work with so I decided to just get crothix. There are other ingredients that can help to thicken a shampoo, e.g. glycol distearate and PEG150; if you can get hold of them then you can try those as your thickeners - be sure to keep to the usage limits.

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You might also like:

• Neno Natural's Free DIY Shampoo Recipes

Ref:

• Thickening Agents For Surfactant Systems (evonik.com)
• Shampoo Making Instructions (SwiftCraftMonkey.com)
• Surfactants & Fragrances: Viscosity (SwiftCraftMonkey.com)

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