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.
Hair is a fascinating subject for me – with good reason, some might say – and it is the reason I started making my own bath & body products. I couldn’t find shampoo just for oily hair any more – it was all “greasy roots, dry ends” kind of stuff – and I figured I...
I think Spectro-Jel might be a Canadian only product, but it’s been a very effective cleanser for my skin for years (until I started making my own – but I still take it on camping trips because it’s a great no-water-necessary cleanser!) It’s a lot like the Cetaphil cleanser we looked at the other day...
I love figuring out what’s in a product and duplicating it! I’ll give you an idea of how I figure out how much is in a product when I set out to replicate it. It’s based on what I know are the usage rates of the ingredients and where they end up on the ingredient...
This is such an interesting product – you’ll see what I mean when you look at the list of ingredients… Ingredients: Water, Cetyl Alcohol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Stearyl Alcohol, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Butylparaben. We have very low levels of surfactants, and one that is considered the most irritating of what we have available to us....
Let’s take a look at a facial cleanser intended for acne prone skin, Neutrogena’s Oil-Free Cream Cleanser with Salicylic Acid (2%). Water: Necessary and welcome. Our solvent. Sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate: We know this is a great surfactant for oily skin. Cocamidopropyl betaine: The amphoteric surfactant that increases mildness and viscosity. Cetearyl alcohol & stearyl...