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.
SwiftCraftyMonkey 
In the October Q&A post, Chelsea asked, Hey swift – I am super interested in azelaic acid and some in general information about it. I made sure to to check via the search first and didn’t produce results; though I hope I didnt accidentally miss this ingredient info on the blog. Thank you much for...
We’ve been taking a look at conditioning hair masks over the last few days. Two days ago, we analyzed Sephora’s hair sleeping mask, rose smoothing and anti-frizz version; yesterday, we analyzed Moroccanoil’s version in depth, and took a look at a few others very briefly. Each of these contains water; a positively charged or cationic...
In this post – Back to basics: Making your first lotion! – Leona asked, When adding preservative to a lotion master batch, do I add enough preservative to include the FO/EO? When figuring out how much preservative to use, we want to take into account all the ingredients in the formula. This means the water, aloe...
Yesterday, we took a look at the Sephora hair sleeping mask conditioners. Today, let’s take a look at another one – MOROCCANOIL Restorative Hair Mask. ($53 Can for 250 ml/8 ounces at Sephora online.) The suggested usage is… “Apply a generous amount to towel-dried hair and comb through. Leave on for five to seven minutes and rinse thoroughly. Follow...
I’ve been asked by a few people if we could make some hair conditioning masks, to which I say “yes! That would be great fun!” so let’s take a look at a few ingredient lists so we can see what these products contain and how to use them. First up, Sephora’s hair sleeping mask collection!...