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.
A triglyceride is made up of a glycerol backbone and three fatty acids. So let’s take a look at fatty acids! If you’re a lotion maker, you’re familiar with stearic acid as a thickener. Stearic acid is a C18 fatty acid, which means it is a long chain (C18) fatty acid without any double bonds,...
I find one of the hardest things about making lotions is choosing the right oil for the job! I’m faced with a shelf of wonderful oils filled with wonderful and amazing qualities and I can’t use them all! How to choose? Here’s a little chemistry on triglycerides as a preface to a series on oils…...
I know I recently wrote a post on this topic, but I thought I’d add a little more to it here… What is phase inversion? We know we have two phases in our lotions – the oil phase and the water phase (if you want more technical terms or to learn more about emulsification, please...
Mich brings up a very good point that I think needs addressing! Here you have the HLB requirement for dimethicone as either 9 or 10, depending on c.s. It is listed as 5 on both LabRat’s PDF and the Herbarie’s list. (Neither of those specify the c.s.)In the texts I’ve been reading, I keep seeing...
All right, so we did a kinda basic recipe yesterday, let’s look at something more complicated…a body butter filled with various oils and esters and silicones.OUR MODIFIED BODY BUTTER RECIPEWATER PHASE42% water10% aloe vera liquid10% lavender or rose hydrosol2% sodium lactate OIL PHASE10% oils – 5% macadamia nut and 5% safflower oil15% butter of choice...