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’m definitely the type of person who likes to experiment – and that’s one of the more obvious things I’ve said today – so you know I had to take the lotion bar a little bit further and try something new and more complicated! I rummaged through my box o’ stuff and incorporated a few...
I could probably start a blog called “modifying your oils and butters for lotion bars” and write posts every single day for a year going over every single possible combination – but since I already have a blog that I enjoy writing and since the whole point of this series of back to basics is...
I realized I didn’t include this in the whipped butter or lotion bar posts, so I’ll include it here… Sometimes your mango or shea butters can get grainy (this can happen to cocoa butter, but not as often as the other butters). The reason for this is the fatty acid profile of the butters. Let’s...
I love Alton Brown, and if you get a chance to see the episode “There Will Be Oil” (Season 12, episode 5), watch it! He explains how different oils are processed – what it means if an oil is cold pressed, expeller pressed, or solvent extracted – and why the different oils are processed that...
Yesterday we took a look at the basic recipe for lotion bars. You can change the skin feel, melting point, and hardness of a bar by playing with the wax type and amount without changing the type of butters or oils. Although the basic recipe is 1/3 beeswax, 1/3 butter, and 1/3 oil, playing with...