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.
Super Sterol can be used pretty much anywhere you’d use a regular oil, but as it is a lot more expensive, you might want to save it for those products where you want some serious moisturizing and skin barrier repair, like a facial moisturizer or serum. In this serum for dry skin, we switched the...
Super Sterol is a brand name for the product C10-30 cholesterol esters, and it’s produced by Croda. It’s derived from wool wax and shows excellent spreading and excellent adhesion properties. It is a clear, white to yellow, odourless oil like substance that is quite thick compared to other esters. Our stratum corneum lipids contain cholesterol,...
If you look under the section entitled “Links to Lists”, you’ll see there’s a change – I’ve updated the oils & butters section to be emollients – oils, butters & esters to include links to the posts I’ve been writing on esters. (I’m only allowed 10 pages, so I have to use them sparingly!) If you...
If you’re making a conditioner, consider using cetyl esters in place of the cetyl alcohol to make a thinner product. You can substitute it 1 for 1 with cetyl alcohol in any conditioner recipe. Cetyl esters are a great inclusion in a leave in conditioner where you want the boosted substantivity of the cationic quaternary compound without the...
As I mentioned yesterday, you can use cetyl esters as a substitute for cetyl alcohol in pretty much any creation. You will find you have a slightly silkier, definitely thinner, lotion when you make this substitution. As a note, if you’re using BTMS as your emulsifier, you probably won’t notice a difference in the silkiness...