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.
In this post, Mychelle asks: I have a question about making larger batches of our products. I’ve been playing with 1000-2000 gram batches of my favorite formulas lately, and the big batches don’t cooperate as well! Several batches of my shampoo bars came out far softer and needed a much longer cure, even though I...
I’ve been saying this for years, but chemicals are not bad things. A chemical is anything composed of elements. Water, air, your dog, my hair…everything is a chemical. De-baddening the word “chemical” was the the goal of the International Year of Chemistry in 2011, and it’s become the goal of a new campaign called Chemicals...
pH is so important when it comes to creating rinse off and leave in products, especially facial products or those based on foaming and lathery surfactants. Using a product with an out of whack pH on our skin can lead to an increase in scaling, a decrease in hydration, and a possible increase in bacterial...
We took a look at using BC Glacial clay, jojoba beads, and dermabrasion crystals in our surfactant based cleanser in yesterday’s post, yesterday. Let’s take a look at a few other exfoliants we could add. AUSTRALIAN PINK CLAY (INCI Kaolin clay)I bought some of this from Voyageur Soap & Candle because it’s supposed to be good for...
It’s been a while, but my testers have responded, so here are the results! I’m working with the base surfactant for oily skin we figured out in this post. If you don’t know what the ingredients are, you’ll find them in that post or in the ingredients list or the surfactants section of the blog. Part...