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.
White willow bark is an excellent inclusion in a hair care product for someone with really oily hair or a dandruff prone scalp. The salicylic acid helps exfoliate the scalp, and the tannins are astringent – a winning combination. We’ve taken a look at using rosemary extract in hair care products – do the same...
Grapeseed extract can reduce cell proliferation and there’s some talk it could help with hair growth (although I’m always dubious about claims like that). It would make a great addition to a shampoo or conditioner intended for dandruff prone hair! I’m thinking of including a little rosemary extract to the mix as well. (Click here...
Rosemary is a good addition to hair care products, what with the claims of increased blood circulation and the ability to form a thin oily barrier on your skin or scalp, and with the claims rosemary can control sebum production. So let’s make a few hair care products that might be useful for someone with...
I keep seeing things about my conditioner recipe being too thick at 7% (click here for the download, or just go through the blog to find the various recipes for conditioner…), and I couldn’t quite understand it. It’s just liquidy enough to squish out of a bottle and spread nicely, but not so liquidy that...
So what have we learned by taking a look at the ingredients in heat protecting hair care products?What was the same? Each product contained dimethicone, water soluble or oil soluble, in differing amounts. Each contained conditioning agents, usually as a cationic quaternary polymer as opposed to an intense conditioner as a cationic quaternary compound (like...