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.
As we saw yesterday, there are all kinds of different botanical extracts we can add to our shampoo to make it just that little bit more awesome! Today, let’s add some exfoliating extracts to help with dandruff or dry skin. The goal is to use extracts and ingredients that cause desquamation or the process of...
If this is the first post you’ve seen on this topic, we’ve been working on it for a while. Here’s the list so far… Making shampoo bars with sodium coco sulfate: Duplication of the Lush Jumping Juniper shampoo bar Surfactants: Sodium coco sulfate or SCS Creating a shampoo bar from scratch: Powdered surfactants Creating a...
I love cucumbers – they’re one of the only vegetables I will eat as I’m super picky – and I love the smell of them in all kinds of products, so let’s take a look at a water soluble way to use cucumbers in our products in the form of a cucumber hydrosol. The version...
In yesterday’s post, we started a discussion on the pH of our products when using AHAs. Today, let’s take a look at willow bark as per Marta’s question in the January Q&A! I’m a big fan of willow bark extract as it contains all that lovely salicylic acid, but it’s far easier to use in...
In yesterday’s post on cooling sprays, I used aloe vera 200x powder, which is a concentrated powdered extract that we can dissolve into water to make aloe vera. The easiest way to do it is this: Into a container, measure out 1 gram aloe vera 200x extract, add 198 grams of distilled water, and 1...