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’ve been asked this quite a number of times in the last few weeks, so I thought it was a good idea to re-post this information as well as information on how you can do your own research! What are my resources? The Handbook of Cosmetic Science & Technology (3rd edition), Chemistry for Pharmacy Students, Surfactants...
I’ve always enjoyed shopping local, and this year we’re shopping local even more often! (Please read this post for my good reasons to shop local as this is more about my frustrations about large companies!) Raymond and I realized that we’re pretty self-sufficient during that snow storm a few weeks ago, but we still need raw...
The morning after our last video games club – December 30th, 2011 – my husband turned on our Xbox to download some games for the next video game club. We purchased some awesomely on sale points over Christmas, and we thought it was time for a shopping spree. He couldn’t get into our account. He...
There are many things we can call emulsifiers for our products, but when you’re making a lotion or other emulsified product, what you probably want is an emulsification system, which generally consists of at least two ingredients – a low HLB emulsifier like glycol distearate or glycol stearate and a high HLB emulsifier like ceteareth-20...
I regularly get e-mails from readers who have read somewhere or have been told by someone that they can use essential oils to preserve products, so I thought I’d address this question – if our essential oils have anti-microbial properties, why can’t we use them to preserve our products? Because they aren’t very good anti-microbials...