The home of SwiftCraftyMonkey Formulating Inc.! Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys). Often strange, occasionally useful, and always worth a stop as a point of interest on your journey through the Intertron.
I’ve been having some fun playing with this new-to-me, water soluble, liquid extract – Yucca extract (INCI: Yucca Smalliana leaf extract and propanediol) – so let’s take a look at it before we use it in a liquid clarifying shampoo for oily hair shortly. This type of yucca is known as Beargrass yucca, and the...
Cranberry oil – INCI: Vaccinium macrocarpon (cranberry) seed oil – is an interesting oil. With 3 to 6% palmitic acid (C16), up to 2% stearic acid (C18), 22 to 26% oleic acid (C18:1), 30 to 38% linoleic acid (C18:2), and 20 to 38% linolenic acid (C18:3), you’d expect it to have a short shelf life...
I bought this awesome cold pressed, refined black currant seed oil (INCI: Ribes Nigrum (black currant) seed oil) from Voyageur Soap & Candle* a few weeks ago, and I have been trying it in all kinds of things, from anhydrous products like whipped butters and lip balms to emulsified products, like lotions, body butters, and...
*Before we start, please note that I do not take advertising in any form – no ads, no sponsored contents, no affiliate links – so every link in the post (and on this blog) is offered so you can find things easier when shopping. Your monthly subscriptions mean I don’t have to clutter up this...
I wanted to share with you this new, exciting, foamy, bubbly, lathery™ surfactant I was sent by Simply Ingredients – shea butter surfactant (INCI: Shea butteramidopropyl betaine) for those of you looking for an amphoteric, secondary surfactant, or betaine not derived from coconut. Yep, this is a surfactant derived from shea butter that works very...