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.
It is so cold in my workshop that I can’t go into it, so the posts I was hoping to write about using the thickeners and the Iron Chemist results may be delayed! It’s been below freezing since Saturday, -3˚C or lower in the mornings, and not much higher in the afternoons, and the moment...
Hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (also known as hypromellose or HPMC as I’ll be typing from now on!) is a non-ionic, water soluble polymer derived from cellulose. It comes as a white or off-white odourless powder that we use to thicken our products. Because it’s non-ionic, it has many uses like shampoos, lotions, shaving gels, and pretty...
In this post, Heidi asks…My question is this.They tell us we don’t need preservatives in soaps. Do you believe this is true? And if it is, why do we need a preservative in a solid shampoo bar (syndet)?And how about something without water like a body lotion bar? Great question! Let’s take a look at...
Don’t confuse guar gum with cationic guar gum – regular guar gum is non-ionic and does not offer any substantivity to your hair, and it’s a fine white powder, not a yellowy powder. It will, however, behave as a good thickener for our products. It’s water soluble and non-ionic, which means you can add it...
Here’s a little chemistry to start your day! Let’s take a look at colloids, hydrocolloids, and shear thinning. What is a colloid? A colloid is “a substance microscopically dispersed evenly through another substance.” It can be a gas, solid or liquid. It consists of two phases – the dispersed or internal phase and the continuous...