The home of SwiftCraftyMonkey Formulating Inc.! Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys). Often strange, occasionally useful, and always worth a stop as a point of interest on your journey through the Intertron.
You’ve been looking forward to having the house to yourself for a few hours on Saturday morning, and the workshop beckons! ARGH! I’m out of something essential (for me, it’s usually aloe vera). Substitution to the rescue! I have BTMS-25 not BTMS-50 and I want to make a liquid conditioner! BTMS is INCI Name: Behentrimonium...
As I mentioned in the first gel post, carbomers and surfactants don’t tend to play well together. But we’re going to force them to be the bestest of friends by choosing our surfactants wisely and putting the ingredients together in the proper order. I made up this formula – the Gardener’s Hand Scrub – for...
I know you’re probably sick of this recipe for toner, but it works well in a gel format. You can also use this as an under eye application with a few tweaks, and it does feel nice and cool for the summer. (Can you tell I’m not a fan of being warm?)So why make a...
Adding aloe vera to gels can be tricky because gels don’t tend to like ingredients filled with lovely salts and electrolytes. We like a good challenge, so let’s figure out how to make an aloe vera gel with cationic polymers and moisturizers! For the aloe vera gel, we’d ideally like a ton of aloe vera...
I love making gels – they aren’t hard to create and they have so many uses. There are a few ways to make gels – with a polymer like Ultrez 20 or with cellulose – but I’m going to concentrate on the polymer method as I haven’t had a chance to play with cellulose yet...