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 Thanks to everyone who has been voting in the Aviva competition – 2 days left, so if you have votes left, please use them – and buying the e-books, Back to Basics and the Hair Care Products: Shampoos & Conditioners! You have no idea what your contributions mean to our groups! Your donations make it...
I bet you never though your pigments could have such an effect on your preservative system – but they do! As with the inactivation of preservatives by non-ionic ingredients, this problem is one for the parabens. If you make mineral make-up, this really relates to you! (Click here to read the entire study.) Inorganic pigments...
I mentioned in the parabens post that some preservatives – mostly the parabens – can be inactivated by non-ionic ingredients, including some of the fatty alcohols (like cetearyl alcohol), fatty acids, esters, and polysorbates, when they’re used as emulsifiers (using the HLB system). The paraben based preservatives include Phenonip, Liquipar, and Germaben II, and the...
Cosmocil CQ is a really novel preservative, relying upon polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) as the preservative, which is neither a formaldehyde releaser nor a paraben based product. The INCI is polyaminopropyl biguanide. It’s both a bacteriostatic and bactericidal preservative that should be combined with a fungicide like one of the parabens, potassium sorbate, or sodium benzoate (one...
When this series on preservatives ends on November 4th, I’m planning a week of much maligned ingredients week, including propylene glycol and mineral oil, and some of those on the Suzuki Foundation’s list. Since I tend to be out of the loop about what’s bad this week, I’m looking to you – my amazing readers...