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.
I love SCI – as if you hadn’t noticed yet! – and we can make moisturizing and conditioning shampoos for dry or normal to oily hair by using either the type with stearic acid or the type without. Today we’ll be using the type with stearic acid (check with your supplier, but if you have...
Making a conditioning shampoo for dry hair is a little harder than making shampoo for normal or oily hair. For dry hair, we want to focus on mild surfactants, increasing the mildness of those surfactants, and increasing the emolliency. Dry haired girls should never ever shampoo without conditioning, and we’ll increase the conditioning power of...
As I was singing in the shower this morning (“Evidence” by Faith No More), I started thinking about the nature of washing our hair. Here are my thoughts… Do we need to rinse and repeat? Not usually. If your hair is especially greasy, yes, but otherwise, no. (Although I’m contradicting Homer who said, “Always repeat”.)...
Mich writes to ask: A lot of shampoos and conditioners are labeled “safe for color-treated hair”. What makes them color safe? Are there ingredients that make color fade faster which those of us with colored hair should avoid? Or is it just marketing? The colour on our hair fades in a few different ways – from...
How do we modify a conditioning shampoo to be more suitable for oily hair? What’s the goal for an oily hair shampoo? To remove the sebum and other stuff in your hair without stripping it. We could use some really harsh detergents to accomplish this goal – SLS, for instance – but this will only...