Welcome to the home of SwiftCraftyMonkey Formulating Inc.! Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys)! Here you’ll find over 5,000 posts and formulas written over the past 16 years for everything from lotions, creams, and body butters to hair care products to fancy facial products filled with actives and cosmeceuticals! Enjoy the site without distractions – no ads, pop ups, sponsored posts, affiliate links, “one weird tricks” – all supported by readers like you.
I am asked all the time about how much emulsifier to use. If you are using Polawax, the general rule of thumb is to use 25% of the oil phase. So if you have 20% oil, you’d use 5% Polawax. If you have 30% oil, you’d use 7.5% Polawax. And so on. So why am...
As we know, dry skin needs a lot of oils, film formers, and humectants, so we’ll modify our basic facial moisturizer recipe to include those ingredients. This recipe will be suitable for normal-to-dry skin as well, as long as your skin can tolerate oils. Water phase: You can include some lovely liquids in the water...
Before the lengthy series of posts on surfactants, we were taking a look at different skin types. So let’s take a look at formulating facial moisturizers! I’ll be using this basic facial moisturizer recipe as our starting point. BASIC FACIAL MOISTURIZER RECIPEWATER PHASE 77.5% water2-5% humectant of choice0.5% allatoinOIL PHASE8% oils4% emulsifier2% thickenerCOOL DOWN PHASE0.5%...
This is such an interesting product – you’ll see what I mean when you look at the list of ingredients… Ingredients: Water, Cetyl Alcohol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Stearyl Alcohol, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Butylparaben. We have very low levels of surfactants, and one that is considered the most irritating of what we have available to us....
I love foamer bottles and I love lime green, so you know this bottle is a winning combination! And I love SCI – but can you use it in a foamer bottle? Yes! (I know! I was shocked, too!) I set out to create a foaming face wash filled with all kinds of interesting and...