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.
Super Sterol can be used pretty much anywhere you’d use a regular oil, but as it is a lot more expensive, you might want to save it for those products where you want some serious moisturizing and skin barrier repair, like a facial moisturizer or serum. In this serum for dry skin, we switched the...
Super Sterol is a brand name for the product C10-30 cholesterol esters, and it’s produced by Croda. It’s derived from wool wax and shows excellent spreading and excellent adhesion properties. It is a clear, white to yellow, odourless oil like substance that is quite thick compared to other esters. Our stratum corneum lipids contain cholesterol,...
If you look under the section entitled “Links to Lists”, you’ll see there’s a change – I’ve updated the oils & butters section to be emollients – oils, butters & esters to include links to the posts I’ve been writing on esters. (I’m only allowed 10 pages, so I have to use them sparingly!) If you...
If you’re making a conditioner, consider using cetyl esters in place of the cetyl alcohol to make a thinner product. You can substitute it 1 for 1 with cetyl alcohol in any conditioner recipe. Cetyl esters are a great inclusion in a leave in conditioner where you want the boosted substantivity of the cationic quaternary compound without the...
I’ve always wondered why the foamy surfactant based products we’ve made in our craft groups – bubble bath, body wash, shampoo, and facial cleansers – weren’t as thick as those I made at home. I thought it was thanks to my use of volume measurements instead of weighted measurements – yeah, I know, I tell...