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.
Oils and butters are a great way to get extra moisturizing for your hair and scalp into a conditioner. There are tons of different oil and butter choices you can make – some of it will depend upon the goals of the conditioner, some of it will depend on what you’ve got in your workshop....
If you look at the ingredients in anti-frizz sprays or sera, you’ll see two ingredients (and variations thereon) – cyclomethicone and dimethicone. It’s not hard to make one of these at home. The big difference between the serum and the spray – the serum tends to use the higher c.s. dimethicone (thicker), whereas the spray...
Silicones – like cyclomethicone and dimethicone – offer film forming, occlusive, and emollient properties to your conditioners to decrease friction, increase gloss and shine, improve wet combing, and decrease moisture retention or frizzing (which are all part of the conditioner’s goals!) Every hair type can benefit from silicones. Dry hair can benefit from the emollient...
I love using hydrolyzed proteins in my products for skin and hair. They act as humectants, emollients, and film formers in our shampoos and conditioners, and they can increase the substantivity of your product by binding to the fatty alkyl groups found in our cationic compounds and cetyl alcohol (in other words, they make your...
Yesterday we added hydrosols and extracts to our conditioner to make a good, basic conditioner. Today we’ll take a look at tweaking the basic recipe for specific hair types. Aloe vera is a good inclusion for most, if not all, hair types. It’s a film former and humectant, which means it can draw water to your...