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.
Someone asked me why their conditioner bars were soft in the syndet shampoo bar group I admin with Jo-Anne Emery on Facebook, and they shared their variation on my formula in which they’ve included 5% coconut oil and an unknown butter, and I thought I’d expand on what I shared with them over there… Important...
There’s absolutely no need to use both BTMS-25 and BTMS-50 in a conditioner bar as they contain the same ingredients. If you wanted to add cetearyl alcohol to a BTMS-50 formula, just buy it on its own as it’s about 75% cheaper! If we have a formula that’s 60% BTMS-50, we have 30% BTMS and...
In the monthly Q&A, Susan asked, I recently made your Epic Rinse Out Conditioner and am very happy with it but I have a couple of questions … If I’m correct, isododecane is a volatile ingredient so I’m wondering why it’s added to the warmed water phase rather than at cool down. Also, I’ve seen propanediol...
This conditioning ingredient profile appeared in its original form in the e-book, Shiny things, volume 3: Things that distracted me, issued in November 2019. This is is the kind of material I share in these e-books – ingredient profiles, emollient profiles, other profiles along with formulas to show you how to use them. Many are exclusive...
Have you ever caught a whiff of a positively charged conditioner like Incroquat BTMS-50 or Honeyquat and wondered why it smelled fishy? There’s nothing wrong with the product: You’re smelling the ammonium salt in the cationic quaternary compound! Some people can smell it, some can’t. It’s hard to know if you’ll be a smeller or...