Hair Gel With Two Ingredients? | DIY Flaxseed Gel Recipe

Hi everyone. After years spent relying on piles and piles of expensive curly hair styling products, imagine my shock when I found out that there was a completely natural, inexpensive, and DIY equivalent product that I could make myself using only flax seeds and water. Not going to lie, I was very skeptical, but upon making my very first batch of homemade flaxseed gel and using it in my hair, I was astounded at how similar this product was to my all-time favorite conventional curly hair styling product that I had used for many years at a fraction of the cost and using only natural ingredients. So in this video, I will be sharing with you how to make and use your very own all-natural DIY flaxseed gel. So whether you have curly thick hair like me or even straight fine hair, this recipe is going to be helpful for you. Flaxseed gel, because it is such a simple natural product, is very versatile and can be used for very many different applications. For example, if you have any kind of natural curl or wave pattern to your hair like I do, it can obviously be used to help define your curls naturally. But if you have straight hair, flaxseed gel can be used as a sort of leave-in conditioner, as a treatment for your ends before putting it into styles, or as a styling aid to help you get your straight hair into styles that it would otherwise kind of be popping out of. So keep on watching for the recipe, how to make it, how to apply it. I'll give you the exact instructions on also how you store this gel and how long it lasts for. Keep watching until the end to hear my personal opinion on situations in which you may want to be cautious with using this recipe, and also some tips for how you can make it even better. So let's jump into it. Okay, so here's what we're going to need. We're going to need some whole flaxseeds, not ground flaxseeds, whole ones, a liquid measuring cup, and some filtered water of course, a one-quarter cup measuring cup, a fine strainer or cheesecloth, and a small saucepan. So we're going to start by measuring out a quarter cup of the whole flaxseeds, and just setting that aside for now. Then you're going to need two cups of filtered water. I'm using my family's Berkey water filter for this. And then we're just going to add that water to the saucepan on the stove and bring it to a boil, preferably with a lid on it so it doesn't all evaporate. Okay, so once that water is boiling, we're just going to go ahead and add in all of our quarter cup of flaxseeds straight into the water, and turn the heat down so it goes down to a simmer for several minutes, and just keep stirring that throughout this time period. And you will see as time goes on that the consistency of the gel will turn from water to a thin gel to eventually a thicker gel. I like to leave my flaxseed gel on the stove for about nine minutes, but you can do less than that if you want a thinner gel. It will also be easier to strain if you leave it on for a little less time. Anywhere from six to nine minutes I'd say is a good starting point, but you'll have to gauge it by how your gel looks and what consistency you are looking for. Okay, so this is what my gel looks as it's getting close to the end, and keep in mind that it will get thicker when it's cool as well. Okay, so I've removed my pot from the heat and now it is time to strain it. I recommend doing this when it is still hot, at least if you're using a fine mesh strainer, because if you let it cool with the seeds in it, it will be almost impossible to get the seeds out of the gel. If you're using something like cheesecloth, you may have a little more wiggle room and you may be able to wait till it cools, but in this case I'm using a fine mesh strainer. I will talk more about the cheesecloth method at the end of the video. This was somewhat tricky to get all the gel separated from the seeds, and there does end up being a fair amount of gel that is just impossible to separate from the seeds, so the next time I make this gel I'm going to experiment with likely the cheesecloth method and see if that gets me better results, but for now this is what I've been doing. So you just have to keep kind of stirring it and encouraging that gel to come through the strainer. It is a bit of an exercise. So eventually this is pretty much what I was left with in the strainer, and then I have my gel that's strained through to the liquid measuring cup there underneath. Okay, so at this point you can just leave it as is, or what I like to do is I like to add some hair benefiting essential oils. So in this case I'm going to be adding some rosemary essential oil and some lavender essential oil. So these just help it smell nice, they add some hair benefits, and I like to think that they help preserve it for just a little bit longer, and I'll talk a bit later about how long this gel will keep in the fridge. So I'm pouring it into a cup, and actually if I had a better container I would have poured it into my container at this point, and it will keep for up to three weeks in the fridge. So now I'm applying it to my wet hair out of the shower. So I get in my hands, I rub it together to make it as liquidy as possible, and then I just scrunch it into my wet curls. If you have straight hair and you're using it as more of a leave-in conditioner, then obviously you wouldn't scrunch it, you would just apply it much like a leave-in conditioner. The great thing about flaxseed gel is that it's not just a styling product, it is also like a leave-in conditioner. It has lots of hair growth and hair health benefits. And making sure I get it on the back of my hair, because that tends to be the most dry and there's the most hair at the back of my head, so just making sure I get all of that hair as well. And scrunching to create more volume and more bouncy curls. Okay, so that's my hair after the gel has all been applied, and this is what it looked like after my hair dried. Flaxseed gel really makes a difference in how long my curls stay looking nice. So before we wrap up, I'd like to first of all give you, I guess, a word of caution on situations in which you may want to be a little more discerning about your use of flaxseed gel, and then we'll jump into some improving tips that you can use to make your flaxseed gel even better. Okay, so what are some situations in which you either may want to avoid flaxseed gel or use less of it? This actually applies to my own hair and my own preferences for how I care for my hair, because I like to dry detangle my hair. And if you apply too much of any kind of gel, even a natural one, it will make your curls feel somewhat crispy, which is good in the sense that it gives you curl definition. But if you use too much gel, it makes your curls crispy to the point where it's very difficult to gently dry detangle your hair, and it becomes a situation in which it would probably be better to actually wet detangle your hair. This is why I personally don't use flaxseed gel every time I wash my hair, or if I do, I use a smaller amount, because I'm always mindful of the fact that later in the week I'm going to need to be dry detangling my hair, and I need my hair to be as malleable as possible for that. Another caveat I'd give if you are going to be dry detangling your hair and you have curly hair like me, and let's say you have applied some flaxseed gel to get those nice defined curls earlier in the week, then just wait as long as possible before you begin your dry detangling process. For me, I'm probably going to wait three to four days, honestly, before I start dry detangling this hair. This is day two of my after my wash day, so I typically like to wait as long as possible before I start dry detangling, and that way the product will have greatly softened up and kind of worn off by that time. Okay, now I'd like to give you a couple tips that can improve your experience of making and using flaxseed gel. I actually got these tips from an Instagram commenter who commented on my reel that I made on Instagram about flaxseed gel, so I definitely like to thank her for these tips. Okay, so one of the hardest parts of making your own flaxseed gel is the straining process, and the reason that it's difficult is because the water turns into gel, and the gel can kind of form this sort of gelatinous mixture with the flaxseed, and so it doesn't necessarily want to separate from the flaxseeds, so this can lead to a lot of wastage and a lot of time spent trying to push it through the strainer. So another option for straining that can make it easier is instead of using a fine mesh strainer, you can use a couple layers of cheesecloth. Cheesecloth, as you may know, has a very wide open weave, so if you use a couple layers and sort of stack them over each other, it should make holes that are just small enough to keep the flaxseeds out, but large enough to make the straining process easier. Although I haven't yet used this idea myself, I plan on trying it the next time I make flaxseed gel because I have not had any luck with the method of using a pair of stockings to strain flaxseed gel, like a lot of people online recommend. It's never worked for me because stockings are just a very fine mesh weave, and the one time I tried it, it just exploded open, so it didn't work for me. The fine mesh strainer does work better as long as I do straight do the straining while the gel is hot, but it still is tricky. One more tip from my expert flaxseed gel Instagram commenter was if you want your gel to be a little less gelatinous and goopy in the sense that you want it to be a little more liquidy so you can easily pull out just a very small amount to use on your hair at a time or to use it as a leave-in conditioner, then you can actually use a blender on your gel. After it's completely strained, there's no more seeds in it, you either use an immersion blender or you could put it in a regular blender, and that will just help smooth out the texture. I shouldn't say smooth it out because it's already smooth, but just make it a little more liquidy and less goopy, if you will. Okay everyone, I hope you all enjoyed this all-natural DIY hair care recipe. If you found this video wildly helpful, be sure to give it a thumbs up, leave your comments below the video. I would like to say that although I no longer have time to respond to all of your lovely comments, I do appreciate each and every one, so keep them coming. I really like your comments. If you would like to actually help support me in continuing to make videos like this for you, you can consider sending me a super thanks using the button below the video, or virtually buying me a coffee using the link in the description. And thanks so much in advance, I really appreciate each and every one of you who chooses to thank me in this way. Be sure to check out the accompanying blog post, which will have this recipe written out for you along with the step-by-step process and photos, and that is on my blog. And on my blog, I also have a free weekly email newsletter that you can sign up for. For links to all of the natural hair care products that I recommend, I will have several of these in the description and in the pinned comment, but I have a big master list on my website, and the page that all of these links are on will be linked in the description, so you can go ahead and check that out. If you enjoy historical natural hair care, as well as historical handmade fashion, definitely subscribe to this channel for lots more awesome content, and hit the notifications bell so you will never miss a future video. 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