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.
An update on the Aviva Community Fund competition. We didn’t make it into the top 10 last round – we were number 19, which is still awesome, but not enough for the top 10 – so we’re on to the second round as of October 25th. If you voted for us before, please consider voting...
Imidiazolidinyl urea is one of the most common preservatives, found as Germall 115 (a powder). Created through a chemical reaction of allantoin and formaldehyde in the presence of a sodium hydroxide solution, it’s then neutralized with hydrochloric acid and evaporated. It’s a good anti-bacterial preservative that isn’t great with fungus, so it is generally combined...
Yesterday we took a look at organic acids, including benzoic acid. This is the category under which parabens fall, as they are para-hydroxybenzoic acids. There are five parabens we find in cosmetic products – methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben, butylparaben, and benzylparaben – and two isomers – isopropylparaben and isobutylparaben – and the position of the functional...
p wrote this really great comment in this post (it’s really long, so I’d encourage you to read the entire thing in the post as I’m editing it slightly for space): I’m in the minority here, leaving my sugar scrubs unpreserved…My reasoning is that any water introduced to the product will dissolve sugar until it reaches...
One of the classes of preservatives we use in our products is the organic acids, their salts and esters. This group includes benzoic acid, carbamates (like iodopropyl butylcarbamate), and variations on salicylic acid and sorbic acid. The organic acids have moderate bacterial activity and great fungicidal activity. The acids have low water solubility, which is...