- sylviajast
One Hit Wonders: Sweet Rice Flour (DIY dry shampoo)
My hair can be a little bit of a struggle, as I’m sure everyone’s hair can be. My ‘issue’ is that I very fine blonde hair. Added to my constant fight with limpness is the fight against oil production. There is one big arch nemesis of fine hair – oil. Oil makes my already fine hair even more limp and lifeless. I don’t want to wash my hair everyday because 1. I’m lazy and don’t have that much time and 2. My ends are dry and I want to stress my hair out unnecessarily. So dry shampoo is my life saver. Dry shampoo does soooo many wonderful things for my hair – it soaks up the excess oil, gives my hair volume and texture AND can help hide regrowth seeing as most dry shampoos are made up of fine white particles (this brightens my hair).
I try and wash my hair every second day but by the morning of the second day, my hair is already a little oily and blah. So ideally, I’d like to use a dry shampoo every second day. Unfortunately, like most things in Australia, even dry shampoo can be expensive. My favourite dry shampoo is the Klorane oatmeal dry shampoo, but at $10-$12 a pop it’s not the cheapest. If you use a dry shampoo in an aerosol can (I think 95% of them come in aerosol cans) you tend you use it up very quickly. I was going through a can weekly and that’s only with using it every second day. It’s a little expensive if you ask me, so I started thinking about alternatives…
The first alternative which popped into my mind was baby powder. I had some on hand, it’s cheap, and the sifter on the top of the bottle is pretty handy, so I gave it a go. I was surprised at how well it worked. It gave me lots of volume. I realised that you have to be careful when using the powder near your part – otherwise it can stick to your scalp and look obvious (and a bit weird). So as long as you aim for your roots, a millimeter away from your scalp (near your part), you should be fine. After a while however, I noticed that the baby powder (or talc) was becoming difficult to wash out of my hair (it would buildup so to speak). Also, because it worked sooo well at soaking up oil, it started to leave my scalp a little too dry. Oh and it was insanely powdery (prepare to get it all over your clothes once you apply the baby powder and then brush it through or shake it through your hair).
I then began to think what else I could trial. Most dry shampoos use some sort of starch. My mum suggested corn starch and I figured I would try that eventually, but in the meantime I had sweet rice flour at home. I figured that it can’t be THAT different to starch (I use in when cooking crunchy Korean chicken lol) so I poured some into a regular kitchen shaker with a fine sifter on top and BINGO! It’s almost near perfect!
You can buy sweet rice flour (or as it’s sometimes called – glutinous rice flour – lovely) in any Asian grocery shop and it’s insanely cheap. This medium sized bag cost me $1.70 and I reckon it will last me months, seriously. Even though baby powder is cheap, this is even cheaper! The texture of this flour is interesting. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s almost grainy and not as feather light – so it won’t fly everywhere upon application like the baby powder did. It soaks up oil very well, without over drying your hair and it doesn’t build up on your scalp like the baby powder does. I also like that it’s an edible product, so that just means that it’s less synthetic. Obviously, it doesn’t come in a handy container containing an inbuilt sifter, so I bought one from my local Woolworths supermarket (these are the ones people use for chocolate or icing sugar) and it does the trick! The finer and smaller the holes are in the sifter the better. They had two version at woolies, so I bought the one containing the finer sifter. I think it set me back around $6.
The sifter also comes with a handy clear cap, so that nothing can fall into the container once your not using it and so that you can keep moisture out. When using my DIY dry shampoo, I turn the sifter to the side slightly, tap some rice flour out onto my roots and then shake it out. It doesn’t dispense to much product if you do it this way (I actually thought it would be tricker to handle but fear not if you have a fine sifter on top). This stuff is saving me bucket loads! I might try corn flour or corn starch (are they the same thing?) once I’m through with my rice flour, but I’m not rushing as I’m very happy with the way the rice flour is working atm.
Obviously, if you have dark hair, it may not work as well for you as it does for me. The colour of the flour is pretty obvious when applying it to dark hair. However, if you have light coloured hair – blonde, light brown, highlights etc. Otherwise, it could be just what you needed if you have light coloured hair that tends to get a little bit oily 🙂
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Catch ya next time,
Beauty Bee~
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