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 If you are going to make a product that contains water or might be exposed to water, you need to include a preservative. If you want to make a preservative-less product or want to use alcohol as a preservative or want to store things in your fridge, do it. If you’ve read all that I’ve...
As people refer me to things they consider to be natural products, I keep seeing the words “coconut derived” beside surfactants, fatty alcohols, fatty acids, and other ingredients that are, in fact, coconut derived. But what does this mean? Coconut oil is often the starting point for surfactants because it has a fatty acid profile...
So how will a shampoo bar for dry hair differ from one for oily hair? We can’t reduce the surfactants as we normally would for dry hair, but we can change the types of surfactants we’re using and increase the oils and butters. Dry hair likes gentle cleansing, so we want to use really gentle...
If you read anything about cocamidopropyl betaine, it is usually listed as an amphoteric, meaning it has a positive functional group – the quaternized nitrogen – and a negative functional group – a carboxylate, phosphate, or a sulfate functional group able to carry a negative charge in neutral or alkaline conditions. Believe it or not,...
I do like the foamer bottle – and not just because it’s lime green (as you can see from this picture, you can get them in a variety of colours)! I’ve been working on a post-crafting hand wash…and the nice thing about the foamer is I can include all kinds of ingredients that would normally...