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.
Why are you using camellia seed oil in your hair care products? Is it because it’s been used for hundreds of years by Japanese women on their hair? And if so, what the heck does that phrase mean? Think about it for a moment…I could say that women have been using CP soap in their...
Yesterday we took a look at at adapting the basic lotion recipe for dry skin by including lots of humectants, oils suitable for dry skin, and occlusive ingredients. But that was only one way of creating this lotion – there are quite literally hundreds of variations you could make just switching out one ingredient for...
In this post, Anonymous asked: Hi Susan. I am wondering if just a bit of lanolin oil would be okay to add to the drier feeling after shave lotion for its healing properties…what is the minimum percentage to add to be effective? Which leads me to an overall question – is there a rule of thumb for knowing the...
Now that we’ve seen what ingredients we could use to create a lotion for dry skin, let’s take a look at creating a basic lotion with those ingredients. I’ll use my basic lotion recipe as the base for this product, but I’m adapting it to include humectants every single time for dry skin. (I generally...
Happy Easter Sunday! I thought I’d spend the day working on various things on the blog, so I thought I’d point out a few new things I’ve done…Take a look to your right (or the picture on your left). You might notice there are three new sections – humectants, products for men, and surfactant based products...