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.
As I may have mentioned, my best friend, Wanda, had an operation on her foot about 6 weeks ago, and she is need of some soothing foot products, so I’ve turned to a few different ingredients to help moisturize the skin around the bandages and to help speed the healing (although I’d never make a...
In this post on humectants, Aesthete asks: I was re-reading this post on humectants and was wondering if you’ve ever formulated with sorbital? It’s described as having “excellent plasticizing & thickening effects providing viscosity & texture, stabilizes gels & provides good clarity, effective moisturizing properties, good smoothing & conditioning effects.” It almost sounds too good...
I think we all know by now what I think of emulsified sugar scrubs. (Do a search for sugar scrub and you’ll find a ton of them), so I thought I’d try this recipe using the golden shea butter. For some reason – and I’m not sure why now – I decided to use 25% golden...
I admit I’m not normally a fan of unrefined shea butter. It can go grainy much more easily than the refined stuff I use, and sometimes there’s a smoky nutty kind of scent that doesn’t seem to agree with me. So I was a little apprehensive about using golden shea butter, sent to me by...
I had such great success with the yesterday’s black cocoa butter solid scrub bar, I had to try it in a sugar scrub! I figured the increased meltiness of the cocoa butter would be an awesome moisturizing ingredient, but I did worry it might be too melty in the container! Using this recipe, I figured...