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.
You might remember our series to figure out what a polar oil might be – part one, hydrocarbons and part two, polar oils – as we struggled to make that darned TKB Thickening clay work. This was supposed to be part three at the time, but we went on holiday and the computer died and...
When we were at Windy Point Soap Making Supplies two weeks ago, we had great fun testing the pH of various Lush products, including three shampoo bars – Jumping Juniper, Montalbano, and Trichomania – as well as two “self-preserving” shower gels, Honey I Washed the Kids and The Olive Branch. Let’s take a look at...
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...