Cempaka Shampoo & Body Bar

Cempaka is a rich oriental floral - Balinese women use this queen of flowers to scent their hair, along with coconut oil. This shampoo is now made in our popular and unique heart urchin shaped moulds. 

Novel, popular and handy - a soap-free bar made of all the ingredients you would expect in a high quality, mild sulphate free shampoo, without the water which normally accounts for around 60 - 70 per cent of the volume. Since it is waterless, it doesn't require any preservative.

PH neutral, kind to coloured hair, and also kind to skin as a high quality alternative to soap. Ideal for travelling as they can't spill. Wide mouth PET plastic jars in 2 sizes are available with little plastic platform inserts should you want to keep your shampoo dry and carry it safely.

Just wet your hair, run the bar across 3 or 4 times, massage up the beautiful creamy lather, and rinse, conditioning as usual.

Our Heart Urchin Shampoo Bar Story

Our grandmothers used soap to wash their hair, then a vinegar rinse to restore acidity. Shampoos, containing detergents, were only invented after the second world war. While soap is still a wonderful hair cleanser in soft or rainwater areas, unfortunately, it is not a good option if the water in your area is hard (full of minerals). That "ring around the bath" (the soap precipitating some of these minerals) gets left in your hair.

So our purpose has been to find the mildest possible shampoos using gentle surfactants that don't strip all the natural oils and reducing any other harmful chemicals as well. The popular decyl polyglucose, while being a "natural" plant-derived surfactant, has the unfortunate effect of cleansing rather too well, stripping the hair and leaving it feeling dry and hard.

Our Solid Shampoo & Conditioner Bars

After many years of sourcing ingredients and playing, we came up with our solid shampoo bars, which we are very happy with. Think of them as bottles of high-quality health food shop shampoo, without the water.

They will last at least as long. One lady had one last for 2 years!

They are great for traveling. We like the effects on our hair, and we like the fact that we don't need any preservatives in them! (Only products containing water require preservatives.) We make them in crock pots, melting down the solid surfactants over a period of several hours, then pouring into molds.

We have two shampoo options for adults and a Teddy shampoo for kids. Our popular dog shampoo bar is a variant of the human ones, with extra ingredients to repel fleas and ticks, and to soothe troubled skin. In late 2019 we developed a new conditioning shampoo bar too, which doesn't require additional conditioner for all but the driest hair types.

We moved to our own new molds for these solid shampoos & conditioners, developed from the beautiful heart urchins we found on the beach near Broome. 

In addition, we have access to some very fine organic virgin coconut oil, which is delightful when used in hair conditioners. Our solid conditioner bar has been a hit, and we eventually learned how to make it solid enough to survive in our hot & humid Broome Wet season as well as the Dry.