Hibiscus and honey homemade hair conditioner

My hair has been needing some extra attention - I noticed that once again my hair was getting really dry and the ends were splitting. Due to a lack of time in the last few weeks I had gone back to using store bough shampoo and hair conditioner...and well the results are definitely visible. 

I decided it was time to come up with a new hair product that would be fun to make and that wouldn't be too time consuming so that I could fit it in my schedule. As it was a last minute idea I had to use only the products I already had in my DIY cupboard. That is how my Hibiscus and honey homemade hair conditioner was created. 

Some of the main ingredients in this hair conditioner are hibiscus water, honey, coconut oil and lanolin. Hibiscus is very rich i mucilage and will give slip to the hair. Honey is a great humectant and is known to make hair soft. Coconut oil has been praised by me more then once for its great moisturizing properties on hair (better than any other oil). Using lanolin in a hair conditioner was an idea I got from Lush, which uses this as a moisturizer in several of their heavier conditioners. 

To prepare the Hibiscus and honey hair conditioner the following ingredients were needed:

Water phase:

Hibiscus infusion (1 tsp dried hibiscus flowers infused in 100 ml boiling water)

1 tsp honey 

1 tsp decyl glucosid

1 tsp neroli hydrosol

Oil phase:

2 tsp cetearyl alcohol

1/2 tsp lanolin

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp olive oil

To add at the end:

10 drops honeyquat 50

10 drops oat protein extract

5 drops Optiphen or other preservative

french vanilla fragrance oil

Hibiscus infused water

Preparation

Prepare the hibiscus infused water by adding boiling water to the dried flowers and leaving them for 15 minutes. Mix the  chilled infused water with honey, decyl glucosid and the hydrosol. In the mean time in an oil bath melt ingredients of the oil phase. Add the oil phase to the water phase and mix everything well. Once the mixture is at room temperature add the honeyquat, protein extract, preservative and fragrance. 

The conditioner is rather runny so it is best to store it in a bottle. I really like the color of the conditioner as in the end it turned out to look like a strawberry milkshake (and at the same time smells like a vanilla milkshake!). 

The final product before transferring into a bottle

The results? So far my hair seems a bit softer and  less dry. I don't think it makes my hair any less tangled so I have yet to improve that!