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.
Bath bombs seem like a really simple concept – a little citric acid, a little baking soda, some fragrance oil, and you have a wonderful acid-base reaction in the tub that brings happiness to the bather. But they can cause such headaches to even the most seasoned bath and body creator! As a point of...
I liked my complicated lotion bar so much, I thought I’d see if I could turn it into a balm-like product with a more whippy consistency. I did this by adding more liquids and reducing the solids.COMPLICATED BALM FILLED WITH ESTERS AND SILICONES 20.3% beeswax 4.1% cetyl esters 24.4% shea butter 22.8% cetearyl ethylhexanoate 1.6%...
p asks in this post: I’m really confused about one thing, though – the melting point of stearic acid is pretty high, 69 C, or so. So how can the melting point of a butter that contains stearic acid be lower than 69 C? Cocoa butter is about a third stearic acid and its melting point...
As we know, a balm is a product intended to help with a condition of some sort intended to be rubbed in, so we need to modify these recipes to help with some condition. What condition could we choose here? How about sun exposure? Let’s say you’ve been in the sun a little too long...
We’ve turned our whipped butters and lotion bars into balms by using specific essential oils and using specific oils and butters (click here and here). Let’s take a look at creating balms that are really softer versions of lotion bars that we’ll store in jars or tins. (Because there’s no water in this balm, you...