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.
I’m of the firm belief that humectants are a girl’s best friend. They draw water from the atmosphere to our hair or skin to moisturize them. We use them pretty much every product we make – if possible – but some people are wary about using humectants in hair care products. Humectants can be amazing...
With a million different conditioners in the marketplace, it seems like insanity to think they’re all based off the same recipe…but they pretty much are. We saw the other day that there are really just three kinds of conditioners – rinse off, leave on, and intense or treatment – and the central component of any...
ged asks…Did your research on hair structure convince you that we do actually need to use shampoo for our hair? I think shampoo is necessary for most hair types – especially mine, which is very oily – to remove the sebum from our hair. If you look at the way the sebum can cement stuff...
Making a conditioner is a lot like making a lotion as we’re making an emulsion that brings together oil soluble and water soluble ingredients with a cationic quaternary compound that is behaving as an emulsifier. Our water phase contains the water soluble ingredients, the oil phase contains our oil soluble ingredients, and the cool down phase contains...
Every conditioner starts with a cationic quaternary compound like Incroquat BTMS-50 or cetrimonium bromide. Which one you choose will depend upon what you are seeking in a conditioner. Most, if not all, hair types will love BTMS, and this is what I suggest as a great starting point for just about everyone. BTMS is easy to...