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.
In the first part (which you can read here) we took a look at including our ingredients in the heated or cool down phase. In this part, we’ll take a look at including our ingredients in the right order. I’ve been using Amaze XT quite a bit lately as I research further the effects of...
Welcome to Workshop Stadium. This week the Chairman, Raymond (my lovely husband), has chosen the fourth Iron Chemist ingredient – rice bran oil! Here are the rules. (Click here for the long version.) Raymond rolled a 3, which means he chose an ingredient from the third box in my workshop, the oil box. He chose...
In this post, anonymous asks: When you weigh your ingredients in your pyrex jugs and put them into the double boiler, are you actually putting the pyrex jug on the top part of the double boiler, or are you adding the ingrediets in the double boiler itself (without the pyrex jug)? I’m a beginner and I...
Well, this was an interesting week and I didn’t think I’d meet the challenge*, but I managed to pull it off by Saturday! This week’s challenge was all about LSB, a surfactant blend of SLSa and DLS mild from Stepan (click here for more information and the rules of the challenge). *I’ve been messing around...
How does one colour a lotion? You can use any water or oil based colours you like. For instance, a few drops of LabColours or other liquid colours you like will work well. You can add some micas to the mix to make the lotion shiny – the more you add, the more sparkly you’ll...