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.
Susan Barclay-Nichols There are a million different ways to figure out your skin type, but I’ve chosen to go with the Baumann skin type indicator (or BSTI). There is a quiz for this, but we can’t access it without a recommendation from a dermatologist, so we’ll just go with the concepts found in this assessment for these...
What exactly is pH and why do we care when it comes to skin care products? pH is a measure of acidity or alkalinity. If you see a pH of 0 to 6.9, this means the thing is acidic. The closer to 0 a thing is, the more acidic it is. A pH of 7...
I’ve had quite a few e-mails and comments asking will 20% alcohol preserve a lotion recipe? I’ve seen people stating they use somewhere between 15% and 60% alcohol to preserve oil in water lotions. (The FDA considers products with 62% as being anti-bacterial, according to this post.) My personal opinion – I don’t think I...
Sebum can be our friend when it is protecting our skin from infection or fungi, protecting from friction, and reducing TEWL, but it can be our enemy when it’s causing us shiny skin and acne pustules! As you can see from this picture, sebaceous glands are located in the hair follicles of our body. The...
“Trans-epidermal water loss (or TEWL) is defined as a measurement of the quantity of water that passes from inside a body through the epidermal layer to the surrounding atmosphere via diffusion and evaporation processes.” (Wikipedia) This is a continuous process over which we have little control. It can increase due to disruption to the skin...