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’ve been following the Newbie Tuesday facial products series, you’ll know we’ve spent the last three months making various cleansers for our skin. Let’s take a look at making toners today. What’s a toner? It’s a liquid or gel that we apply after we clean our skin to make it feel nice. I’ve seen...
Yay! The day is here! We’re creating a very basic facial cleanser recipe for each skin type, which you can try out, then modify it with all kinds of interesting ingredients over the next few days. Then we can get together next Tuesday to look at what you thought of the product and what changes...
One more thing before we get to the details of our various surfactants…Let’s take a look at the importance of the pH of our products. Our skin has an acid mantle, which is a fine, slightly acidic film with a pH of 4.7 to 5.9, which acts as a barrier to bacteria, viruses, and other...
On Tuesday, I asked you to think about your skin type. Today I’ll share with you what I know and love about foamy, bubbly, and lathery surfactants. I love surfactants the way other women love shoes. I have a closet of them, and sometimes I take them out of their little box in my workshop...
I liked yesterday’s lotion and I really liked last week’s lotion with Aristoflex AVC. But there are more experiments to be done, so let’s take a look at a Vitamin C and ferulic acid serum made with this new emulsifier! The main ingredients in this recipe are ferulic acid and Vitamin C, a combination that...