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.
If you’ve been around the blog longer than five minutes, you’ll surely know one of the products I could not live without is the emulsified sugar scrub. I love the fact that it exfoliates and moisturizes my skin with the added bonus of washing off more cleanly than an oil based scrub. It isn’t much...
As I’ve mentioned in the recent past, I’m obsessed with a Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones), and I thought I’d share something I thought interesting… In one of the later books, one of the characters is asked when he/she returns from the outside world, “What three things do you know now...
I am asked all the time about adding essential oils to facial products and the short answer is yes, you can use essential oils in facial products. The long answer is slightly longer…And as usual, please treat essential oils with respect, acknowledging that they aren’t just about adding scent to a product, they may also...
Oil soluble extracts of things we’d normally use as water soluble ingredients can add a little oomph to our oil based facial scrubs. A lot of these you’ll find are extracts in fractionated coconut oil (capric/caprylic triglycerides) or a fairly neutral oil, like sweet almond oil. Let’s take a look at a few of them...
I hope you are enjoying 2013 so far, which, I have to admit, is a weird sounding year. I guess it’s the 13…but I digress. I’m a big fan of goals, but not a big fan of resolutions for myself any more. A recent study showed that we do best in changing our behaviour – quitting...