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.
If you want to make a basic or clarifying shampoo, just leave out the dimethicone and conditioning agents. That’s really what defines a clarifying shampoo. You can leave in all the lovely film formers – proteins, aloe vera – and the moisturizers, but you leave out the conditioning agents. (I tend to do this as...
I keep seeing people worried about build-up of conditioners on their hair (a lot of times accompanied by information about how a friend of a friend was told by her hair dresser that she had a waxy coating of conditioner on her hair, which the hairdresser proceeded to scrape off with a pair of scissors!)...
In general, a shampoo contains surfactants, water, preservative, and thickener. Each one is a pretty obvious inclusion – the surfactants clean, the water thins the mixture, the preservative preserves, and the thickener thickens. But a shampoo is about more than just cleaning your hair. We want something that is bubbly and foamy, something that makes...
I admit I’ve never formulated for African hair types, so I present to you what I have found in my research. I would love to hear from any readers who have this hair type so we can add more information to this post. African type hair has a flattened elliptical cross section, which is responsible...
I’m about to share something with you that might very well rock your world. Something that seems against the rules I’ve been writing about for over a year now. Something that may be so shocking you might need to sit down! It is possible to make surfactant based products without heating and holding your ingredients!Yep,...