The one minute conditioner recipe

When you are teaching something new it pays to keep things simple and so this week my Friday class learned a fast, fun and fab way to make a no-frills hair conditioner.  Well, I say ‘no frills’ but don’t think that means cheap and nasty, after trying this in my hair last night I’m going to keep this as my regular…….

This is the recipe that we used in class:

1)        Water                                              89%

2)       Cetriminium Chloride                            3.0%

3)       Cetearyl Alcohol and Ceteareth-20         4.5%

4)       Vegetable Oil (Macadamia Nut Oil)        1.0%

5)       Keratin Amino Acids                             0.5%

6)       Panthenol                                            0.3%

7)       Preservative (Naticide)                          1.0%

8)       Citric Acid to adjust pH to 5.5               QS

9)       Colour, Fragrance as per your choice    QS

The instructions were pretty simple too:

Measure the ingredients 1-6 into a heat proof container and then whack it into the microwave for approx 1 minute.  Take it out (carefully, don’t burn yourself) and then wizz with a hand blender until you have a homogenous mixture. Allow to cool to 40C and then add your preservative and other bits.  You will need to bring the pH down as it sits at around 6.4 without the citric which is a little high. The cationic ingredient (Cetrimonium Chloride) needs to be at a slightly acidic pH to work)

Now,  the interesting bit.  To make this more natural is also easy if you know what each ingredient if in there for.  All we have to do in this case is ditch the Cetrimonium Chloride (which is the only cationic ingredient in there and therefore the main one ‘sticking’ or conditioning the hair and we have to replace our emulsifier with something not containing the ceteareth-20…….

So, instead of cetrimonium chloride we are going to use the vegetable derived ‘brassicamidopropyl dimethylamine’ to give our cationic charge.  To get this formula to work a cationic charged ingredient is really important as that is what gives the long term conditioning.

And instead of the cetearyl alcohol and ceteareth-20 blend we are going to use a blend of cetearyl alcohol and cetearyl glucoside.

Both are drop in replacements and so no changes in percentage need to be made.

So, there you have it.  TWO simple starting formulations each with a bit of a story to get your hair looking fabulous!

If you need help finding ingredients all of the bits needed for the first recipe can be found on the New Directions website.  For the second recipe the brassicamidopropyl dimethylamine is also known as ProCondition 22 and is made by Innolex. You may have to track that one down via their distributors.

Good luck, happy cooking and remember to finish off all of your ‘cooking’ with micro and stability checks, especially if you are planning to unleash your creation onto the general public.

Amanda

PS: People don’t usually make cosmetics in their microwave for good reason – they can make things too hot, too quick!  I used it in this case for the show element and to enable me to reach my one minute deadline.