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.
So what makes a regular shampoo a regular shampoo? (Click here for more information on shampoos in general.) A regular shampoo is intended to be used every 3 or 4 days, as opposed to the daily use shampoo which is intended to be used, well, every day. We want to formulate a shampoo that will...
The “no shampoo” idea is to eliminate shampooing from your life and use conditioner only to wash your hair. You can use any conditioner for this process; you don’t need something that claims to be a cleansing conditioner (which are usually way more expensive and found in salons!). The key is that the conditioner contains a...
What’s the point of using a shampoo? It seems like a lot of people are touting the awesome power of the “no-poo” method, which is only using conditioner to wash your hair (see my post a little later today on this topic). Shampoo is intended to remove those things that might mess up your hair every...
My grandma and my dad, who was balding in his early twenties! Why does our hair go grey? The short answer – science really doesn’t know. The long answer – it’s a loss of melanin in the hair shaft. Why does this happen. Science really doesn’t know. I have to admit it amazes me that...
Two definitions you should know when dealing with hair care products – what it means when something is substantive, and what it means when something adsorbs to your hair. (From the post “How conditioners work!” from July 25, 2009…) A conditioning agent (like Incroquat BTMS-50) is a cationic quaternary compound. It’s a positively charged compound...