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.
The post, Should we design our recipes as lines of products?, put forth the idea that maybe we should be consider what we use together when we are making our products. Can we leave ingredients out or reduce the concentration of ingredients when we know what might be coming next? To that end, let’s take...
Kneeley asked a great question: If we were to make say, a shampoo and a conditioner, and maybe a leave in all for the same person or same hair type that are meant to be used together, would we need to make alterations to the recipes for things such as glycerin, proteins etc due to...
In this post, Weekend Wonderings: Adding Vitamin C to a product, Rosi asks: If vitamin C does not penetrate the skin, what is the benefit of it?Good question! We use a lot of ingredients that don’t penetrate the skin well, like hydrolyzed oat protein, carionic polymers, and oils, to name a few, and we know...
In this post on olive oil unsaponifiables, Kim asks: Would olive oil unsaponifiables be ok for oily skin versus other oils or be considered oil free? Technically, olive oil unsaponifiables would be considered oil free because it isn’t an oil. (I’ve seen someone claim that a lotion with shea butter was “oil free” because shea...
In this post, A few thoughts for a lazy Saturday, Fuchia asks: A bit off topic but I’m curious about making a Vitamin C cream. I have a face cream recipe I make now and love (it does not contain Vitamin C but uses Optiphen Plus as a preservative) and keep reading online that you can...