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.
We had much fun playing with our new pH meters in the pH & preservative class at Windy Point Soap Making Supplies in Calgary last night! Michele and I popped into the local Lush to buy a few products for testing as we’ve always been curious about the pH of some of their products. We...
As you saw in this post recently – magnetic stirrer with hot plate – we heated our water phase that included hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC) on the magnetic stirrer with hot plate as it needs both agitation and heat to fully hydrate this starch. Why did we need to do that? It’s the idea that thickening ingredients...
We find this compound, pyrrolidine carboxylic acid (PCA), with sodium or zinc as a salt we can use in our products, and as a component in the natural moisturizing factor of our skin. It’s a type of salt, which means it’s an electrolyte, so it can mess with the viscosity of our gels, emulsions, and...
What exactly is a salt? “A salt is a chemical compound consisting of an assembly of cations and anions. Salts are composed of related numbers of cations (positively charged ions) and anions (negative ions) so that the product is electrically neutral (without a net charge).” (Reference) If you’ve taken my introduction to chemistry course – free...
If you want to catch up on the acids, bases, and pH – oh my! series, please visit the pH & pH meter section of the blog! On the 7th, we created the water phase of this light summery lotion with Varisoft EQ 65, and yesterday, we looked at the oil phase and considered which...