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 seen these esters around, with names like PEG-7 olivate or PEG-12 laurate, but what the heck are polyethylene glycol esters? Point of interest: What we’ve been taking a look at for the last week are called alkyl esters, just one of the many types of esters! There are a ton of different types –...
Yesterday we made a hand lotion using our esters…today we’ll take a look at making a body lotion by tweaking those ingredients. How is a body lotion different than a hand lotion? I like my body lotions to be thicker and more occlusive. So I’ll switch the cetyl esters for cetyl alcohol and change and...
We took a look at using esters in facial moisturizers, so let’s take a look at using esters in our lotions and creams! Why use esters in a lotion? Esters take a long time to go rancid, so your lotions would have at least a year long shelf life (depending upon the other ingredients). They...
Super Sterol can be used pretty much anywhere you’d use a regular oil, but as it is a lot more expensive, you might want to save it for those products where you want some serious moisturizing and skin barrier repair, like a facial moisturizer or serum. In this serum for dry skin, we switched the...
Super Sterol is a brand name for the product C10-30 cholesterol esters, and it’s produced by Croda. It’s derived from wool wax and shows excellent spreading and excellent adhesion properties. It is a clear, white to yellow, odourless oil like substance that is quite thick compared to other esters. Our stratum corneum lipids contain cholesterol,...