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 coming to the end of the cosmeceutical series in the next week or so and wondered what you’d like to see next. Do you want to see more formulating ideas on how to use them? Do you want to see more from the learning to formulate series so you can make your own lotions?...
We’ve used 19 pounds of soap in the last week in two classes, and you know it was good clean fun! 42 tweens and teens now know how to make melt & pour soap, and I suspect there are some moms who will be given some of these treasures for Mother’s Day in May (and,...
Matrixyl 3000 (INCI: Glycerin (and) Water (and) Butylene Glycol (and) Carbomer (and) Polysorbate 20 (and) Palmitoyl Oligopeptide (and) Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7) contains two matrikines – Pal-GHK and Pal-GQPR. It claims that it helps to “maintain skin’s youthful appearance” by offering anti-wrinkling and lifting effects. So what the heck does this all mean? Matrikines are “peptides liberated by...
Palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7 (formerly known as palmitoyl tetrapeptide-3 for some reason) is another polypeptide we can find as a cosmeceutical, although it seems the only place I’ve been able to find it is in Matrixyl 3000 as palmitoyl GQPR (glycine-glutamine-proline-arganine connected to palmitic acid). It’s attached to the palmitic acid to make it more oil solubility...
GHK is a tripeptide that has a strong affinity for copper, so it’s often called copper peptide or GHK-Cu. It occurs naturally in our blood, urine, and saliva and it is used in our bodies as a wound healer, anti-oxidant, and anti-inflammatory that can stimulate collagen and glycosaminoglycans (or GAGs), which bind water in the skin,...