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.
Welcome to March with its miserable Smarch weather*. Where I live in the Fraser Valley, B.C., this means rain rain rain and more rain. I don’t mind it as we get all kinds of lovely flowers, including amazing cherry blossoms, but my hair requires so much anti-frizz spray to keep it from being unmanageable! It’s … Read more
I definitely engaged in some aspirational hoarding last year as I ordered so many ingredients from all kinds of places, and I thought I should finally share some of them with you! In this series, I’ll be sharing what I bought, for how much, and why I bought it. You’ll see links to the companies...
Happy anniversary, blog! Today is the 10th anniversary of the date I consider to be the starting point of the blog, the day I started writing exclusively about creating bath & body products. If you had told me on February 28, 2009, that this little blog would lead to a life of writing and teaching … Read more
Isododecane is a hydrocarbon alkane with no double bonds. It’s a non-polar, oil soluble molecule that only contains carbon and hydrogen atoms. We can use it as an oily ingredient anywhere we might use natural oils or butters (vegetable, seed, and animal oils), as well as with esters and silicones. It’s considered an isoparaffin. More...
Since I’m calling this Learn to Formulate February, it only seemed appropriate that we should continue this theme into the e-zine for the month by learning to formulate less greasy lotions! I’m sharing all kinds of information on how to alter these formulas by using different oils and butters. The stats? 42 pages, 13,385 words, and 20 formulas...