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.
Spot treatments can be an effective way to deliver active ingredients to your skin. You don’t want to put a lot of ingredients into it – just the ones you really want to use to help a specific skin problem. I’m thinking of making a skin lightening spot treatment for my mom as she has...
After shave products are all about the astringency and soothing of newly shaved skin, so let’s take a look making a gel type product! I’m basing my product on this post from the cucumber extract series from a few weeks ago. Click here to find why I used each ingredient, and click here to see...
We took a look at making a gelled toner with pre-neutralized gel yesterday, but we found it a little thin. (That’s not a bad thing; I just want something a bit thicker!) Let’s take a look at how we could make a gelled toner from scratch! To make a gelled toner from scratch – or...
I’ve had quite a few of you write to ask why I don’t adjust the pH of my conditioner recipes, and the answer is simple – we don’t need to adjust the pH because it’s in the range we want. Conditioners should be acidic with a pH below 6. All the ingredients we add to...
On Friday we took a look at a new product, a gelled toner, and figured we could make one at home using carbomers. The big difference between making a regular, liquid toner and a gelled toner will be eliminating stickier ingredients because we won’t be removing it from our skin. What kinds of things would...