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 
I thought I’d share some of my favourite, easy-to-make, quick, inexpensive formulas you might want to sell or give as gifts this year. I’m starting with one of my favourites – this really easy lip scrub! One of the easiest and fastest products you’ll ever make are these lip scrubs, based on the ones from...
Welcome back to this introduction to cosmetic chemistry course! Let’s continue our look at esters by investigating those that work as emulsifiers. We’ll get into some emulsion theory, information on the HLB system, then get into those esters! An important note about this series – it’s here for life. It isn’t going anywhere. If you...
Woo hoo! We’re starting our new introduction to cold process emulsifiers series in October 2025 that’ll be available to Foundation, Formulation, and Innovation subscribers to the site here. Starting October 3rd, 2025, every Friday – for Formulating Friday – we’ll be playing with awesome cold process emulsifiers that’ll help us make emulsions in 10 minutes...
Holy cow, how is summer almost over? I feel like we just started picking our gorgeous fresh green beans from the garden, and it’s almost time to plant the garlic for the winter! It’s still pretty warm here – it’s 30˚C+ this week – and I’ll still be in shorts until Hallowe’en no matter the … Read more
Are we lucky or what? Once again this month, Windy Point Soap Making Supplies in Calgary is offering you, my lovely readers, a coupon code to get all kinds of wonderful things for less! Want a few ideas on what you can buy there? If you’re interested in making the 10 minute lotions with cold emulsifiers I...