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.
If you’re a subscriber for the month of May 2018, here’s the May 2018 e-zine, Beyond Emulsifying Wax, part two: Modifications and Substitutions! You may notice something different in that there are two versions of this e-zine – an epub version in a zip file and an PDF. The ePub version will work for iBooks and...
We’ve been having some fun re-creating a safer, more stable version of this terrible HGTV recipe for a homemade cucumber body butter, and I thought after making the Simulgreen 18-2 version yesterday we could finish this series up with a Polawax version! Let’s use this formula for a body butter, which you can find in...
If the idea of a cucumber body butter appeals to you, but you didn’t want to create the separated, contaminated mess we met in HGTV’s seriously awful recipe, join me now to make an emulsified body butter using a few different cucumber extracts. We took a look at making anhydrous or non-water containing formulas for...
I wrote a bit about this solubilizer caprylyl/capryl glucoside in this post on glucoside surfactants, but let’s learn more about it now! Caprylyl/capryl glucoside (aka octyl/decyl glucoside or C8-10 alkyl polyglucoside) is an Ecocert non-ionic solubilizer with a pH of 5.5 to 6 that can be used as a solubilizer and a very gentle surfactant. It...
In the March Q&A, Melanie asked: I have a question about Polysorbate 80. I purchased some to experiment with but have since discovered that this is the magical substance that turns oils into milky rinse off formulas in products such as MAC Cleanse Off Oil. I found a recipe that used Polysorbate 80 at 10% with...