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.
Formula
Let’s make a version of a whipped anhydrous body butter you can pumpkin spice up with a variety of different ingredients! We’ll start with a basic formula with three variations with instructions, then we can look at how we might alter it to meet our theme! The formula! Weigh the oils and butter in a...
Myth-understood: Does your hair need time to adjust when you start using a shampoo bar? Part one, comparing liquid and solid shampoo formulas and a few reasons your bar might not be awesome. Let’s address the myth that your hair needs to “adjust” when you start using syndet or solid shampoo bar. The short answer...
I do love a good emulsified body butter, a lovely thick, gooey, emollient lotion that goes on smoothly on my skin without being too greasy but still leaves behind an occlusive layer that lets me know my skin is being moisturized and hydrated. One of my favourites this year was this occlusive & protective body...
In this post, let’s look at an anhydrous, whipped body butter that we could make as a decadent moisturizer along with the principles of shelf life, packaging, and using anti-oxidants! These are simple formulas with few ingredients, and the shelf life is mostly about the oils and butters we choose. I thought we could take...
Welcome back to this short series on making a lovely cooling and soothing apres sun spray. In part one, we looked at some ingredients we could use to create a base formula. In part two, we chose our preservatives, then made the base formula. In part three, we investigated at a few more ingredients we...