Made in Asheville, NC
Auntie Chelle’s Dry Shampoo
A glass jar of Auntie Chelle's Dry Shampoo with a bamboo lid, standing in a lavender bush at sunset
The Dry Shampoo jar on a wooden ledge surrounded by mint
The Dry Shampoo jar tipped against lavender in evening light
The Dry Shampoo jar standing among lavender stems
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Hand-crafted

Dry Shampoo

$15

Arrowroot and cocoa, with a few drops of rosemary and lavender essential oil. Four ingredients, blended and jarred by hand, for the mornings you’d rather buy yourself another day than wash your hair.

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What’s in it

Four ingredients, and that is the whole list

  1. One

    Arrowroot powder

    A soft white starch ground from the root of a tropical plant, and the ingredient doing the actual work. It takes up the oil at your roots and leaves hair feeling clean and light rather than coated. It’s the gentler cousin of cornstarch — finer, silkier, and far less inclined to sit there looking chalky.

  2. Two

    Cocoa powder

    Plain unsweetened cocoa, and it’s in here for colour. It warms the white powder down to a soft brown so it disappears into darker hair instead of sitting on top of it. It also means the jar smells faintly, wonderfully like a bakery, which was not the point but I’m not sorry about it.

  3. Three

    Rosemary essential oil

    A few drops, no more. Rosemary has a long history in traditional hair and scalp preparations, and it’s the first thing you’ll smell when you take the lid off — green and clean and a little bit like the garden.

  4. Four

    Lavender essential oil

    For the scent, mostly, and because lavender and rosemary have always belonged together. It softens the rosemary’s edge and leaves the whole thing smelling calm rather than sharp.

One honest note

A word about hair colour

The cocoa is what makes this vanish into brown and dark hair, and it’s also the reason it suits that hair best. If yours is blonde, silver or light red, you can still use it — use less than you think, work it right into the roots with your fingertips, and brush it through properly. Go slowly the first time and see how you get on.

If enough of you ask me for a lighter blend without the cocoa, I’ll make one. Just send me an email and say so.

How to use it

Shake, work it in, brush it out

Use less than you think you need. The powder is fine and it goes further than it looks — you can always add a little more, but getting it back out takes a hairbrush and some patience.

  1. Give the jar a shake. The cocoa likes to settle to the bottom between uses.
  2. Start with dry hair — second or third day is when this earns its keep.
  3. Tap a small amount into your palm, or straight onto the roots at your part.
  4. Work it in with your fingertips, along the part and anywhere it feels heavy.
  5. Give it two or three minutes to take up the oil.
  6. Brush it through until it disappears. On darker hair the brushing is what makes it vanish.
Why a jar of powder

No can, no propellant, nothing you have to shake out of your lungs

Most dry shampoo comes out of an aerosol can, which means a propellant, a room full of it, and a canister that can’t be refilled. This is a glass spice jar with a bamboo lid and four things inside it. When you’re through, wash the jar and keep it — it’s a perfectly good jar.

It came about the same way the balm did. I went looking for one I trusted, couldn’t find it, and made it instead.

The Dry Shampoo jar standing in a lavender bush in daylight
In the kitchen

How a batch comes together

One
Measure

Arrowroot and cocoa weighed out by hand and sifted together until the colour is even all the way through.

Two
Scent

Rosemary and lavender essential oil, a few drops at a time, worked through the powder until the whole batch smells the same.

Three
Fill by hand

Spooned into glass jars, capped with bamboo, and labelled at my kitchen table — the same table the balm gets poured on.

Good to know

Living with a jar of powder

Keep it dry

Lid on, dry fingers, and keep it off the edge of the bath. Wet fingers in the jar will clump the powder, and once it clumps it doesn’t un-clump.

Try it at night

Working it in before bed gives it all night to do its job, and you wake up with it already brushed in and invisible. This is the trick that makes people keep a jar.

Go gently the first time

There are essential oils in here. If your scalp runs sensitive, start with a small amount and see how it sits before you make it a habit.

Local pickup & delivery

Rather skip the shipping?

If you’re in the Asheville area, message me and we’ll arrange a pickup — or I’ll drop it off if you’re close by. No shipping cost, no waiting on the post office. I’m at markets now and then too; I’ll post market locations on Instagram.

Arrange a pickup Asheville & nearby
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Also on the shelf
Tallow Balm

Grass-fed tallow rendered by hand over twenty-four hours and infused with calendula, rosemary, lavender and chamomile. The one that started all of this.

Have a look
Four ingredients, nothing you can’t name

Take a jar home

Batches are small on purpose. When one sells out I mix another.

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