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.
I love conditioner bars! They travel well, don’t over-condition, and aren’t hard to make! In short, they’re awesome! I’ve written a great deal about conditioner bars in the past (including a visual tutorial), so I’ll offer you those links now so you can see where the recipe originates, then we’ll do some tweaking. Formulating a...
We’ve already seen what cationic polymers like honeyquat or polyquat 7 can do for a shampoo, so let’s take a look at using these as leave in conditioners suitable for fine hair or children’s hair. The cationic polymers are less conditioning than the cationic quaternary compounds like BTMS-50 or cetrimonium bromide, but they can offer...
Yep, Amaze XT has some wet and dry detangling properties we can use to make some gel based detanglers. We covered a bit about this product in the building viscosity post on surfactants, but let’s re-cap and add a bit more to our knowledge base. You can use a product like Amaze XT (INCI: Dehydroxanthan...
We took a look at using cetrimonium chloride in detangling sprays yesterday, so let’s look at Incroquat CR, another great detangling ingredient. Incroquat CR is easier to find than cetrimonium chloride and it will allow you to include some oils and silicones, if you want. You won’t get a clear product out of this recipe,...
We’ve looked at cream rinses – which are effectively detanglers in rinse-off form – and we’ve looked at leave in conditioners, so let’s take a look at leave-in detanglers suitable for fine hair or children’s hair. The concept is pretty much the same for detanglers as for cream rinses – we want something that contains...