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.
Quite a few people have written to me recently to ask about hair butters, and I did a little research into the topic. I’ve never heard of a hair butter before – remember, I haven’t bought commercial hair care products in years, so I have no reason to go into those sections of stores! –...
I thought I’d try using behenyl alcohol in an intense conditioner with butters and oils. It makes sense, because people who have hair so dry or so brittle that they need to use butters in a conditioner, could probably benefit from the added slip and conditioning of this fatty alcohol. I chose this recipe (found...
I do love my conditioners, and I thought I’d experiment further with one I experimented with last October – my intense conditioner with all my conditioning agents! – by adding a little behenyl alcohol to the mix. Point of interest: Adding a fatty alcohol to a cationic quaternary compound – like BTMS, BTMS-50, cetrimonium bromide,...
I’ve been agonizing over this post for a few days now over this recipe because my original recipe adds up to 105 grams, so if I add 50 grams of water and 0.25 grams of preservative, the grand total of the product will be 155.75. So I could just leave the recipe as is and...
In June, I decided to undertake the great conditioner experiment to see just how much conditioner my hair might really need! (Click here for more information, although I’ll summarize it below!) I’ve got below-my-waist length, coarse, oily, prone to frizzy hair, but other than the period of time where I went pink (look to your...