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.
In this post, Lise asked: Thanks for this series on cleansers which has me all curious about your own preferred face cleanser. I ask because I have personally never had any real success using surfactant based face cleansers. (not sure if it’s sensitivity or just a dislike of the feeling of soap on my face). I...
I found this recipe on Voyageur Soap & Candle’s site a while ago – I can’t seem to find it now on their site! – and I thought I’d share my tweaks for this product. We’ve made it with the craft group a few times, and the ingredients I chose were to help with the...
The first step in turning our surfactant based facial cleanser into a scrub is to choose our physical exfoliants. Some will be great choices, some will be terrible, and some will be all about your preferences and your budget! (Please visit this post and this post to see the complete and detailed list about these...
If you feel lost reading this post, please check out the previous posts on working on our surfactant base recipe part one, part two, part three, and part four. I think we’ve come up with a few ideas for surfactant bases that will work for various skin types. As with any product you want to make, learning about...
I’ve had quite a few comments or e-mails about this topic – can you use your hand made soap as a facial cleanser? – and yes, you can use castille soap as a facial cleanser. It’s lovely stuff and cleans nicely! However… Our skin has a pH between 4.7 and 5.5, and we generally formulate...