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.
Camphor is a component in essential oils (for instance, lavender can have a camphorous odour in some species). It’s used a lot in the food industry to flavour sweets and cough products, and it’s used in embalming, fireworks, and rust prevention. Solid camphor balls are used as a moth repellant. In cosmetics, it’s considered a...
Can lavender essential oil cause boys to grow breasts (a condition called gynecomastia)? You probably heard about this a few years ago, so let’s take a look at the case study (which you can find at the New England Journal of Medicine, February 2007 issue). A quick summary: This was a case study of three...
I was surfing around various forums yesterday morning while taking a break from the annoyance that was putting the tutorial for the cosmetic bag together (I really hate Microsoft products! Stop thinking for me!!!), and the number one question I saw over and over again was this – why did my lotion fail? Let’s take...
I feel as if I have to post this again because I’m getting a number of people writing to me asking about natural products, sending me links to the EWG or Skin Deep databases, and I feel like I need to clarify my position again, so I’m reposting this older post. I really encourage you to...
I’m really enjoying sewing cosmetic bags! I made a ton of them over the holidays as presents for the older kids in our youth programs who do all the volunteering for us (setting up, cleaning up, enforcing the rules, running games, and so on), so I thought it was apt to share this pattern with...