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 love creating lip balms for any time of year, but in the winter, they’re essential! There’s quite a simple formula you can use, and you can tweak to your heart’s content. (This is a formula created by Majestic Mountain Sage and it’s the best one I’ve found…) 20% beeswax 25% soft butter (coconut oil, shea...
We made a water based fragrance spray that was incredibly easy (1% poly 20, 1% fragrance oil, 0.5 to 1% preservative, and 97.5% to 98% water), so why are we making something more difficult to do the same thing? Because we can. And because there are different reasons for making a oil based spray. It...
In your bath oils or lotion bars and apres bath misters are intended to trap the water from your shower or soak in by using oils. Think of them as lotions without water, much like the lotion bar. As they are oil based, we won’t use a preservative or other water based ingredients in our...
(This is a photo of my much beloved manicure scrub. As you can see, I really need to make more!) OIL BASED SUGAR OR SALT SCRUB Making a sugar or salt scrub is fairly simple. You need two major ingredients – salt and oil at equal amounts. IN THE TUB SCRUB (formula) 97% liquid oil...
Before you go on, if you want more detail on any oil – more detail than you see here – please visit the emollients section of the blog. There are whole posts on a lot of these oils! Exotic oils (not a term you want to search for as I think I made it up?)...