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.
As a note, this is a giant post, but I wanted to share this without all the work of having to decide where to end the post, add new links, and do all that stuff that delays posts, so here’s what I would have shared over four days! If you have a formula you want...
Welcome to this detailed page on how to test emulsions – like lotions and conditioners – with a pH meter! If you’d like to read a longer post with even more information, you can find it here – Acids, bases, and pH – oh my! Part four: Testing our products with pH meters! If you’d like...
Montanov 68 (aka at Sugarmulse or Glucomulse, might be Vegetal 68) is another liquid crystal emulsifier we can find at our suppliers. The INCI is cetearyl alcohol and cetearyl glucoside. It is an ECOcert emulsifier, which means it’s naturally compliant. Its suggested usage is 1% to 5% in the oil phase, and I’ve seen it...
I see questions about how to use Aloe Vera Gel in emulsions in every space online in which we discuss lotions, and I thought this topic needed its own post, so let’s take a moment to learn more about Aloe Vera, Aloe Vera Gel, and why I don’t suggest using the latter in emulsions. What...
Original post shared 2009. Slowly updating it for 2023 with new information and diagrams. This is definitely a work in progress as there’s so much more to share! At one time or another, we’ve all experienced epic lotion failure and asked ourselves what we did wrong. We call it separation, but do you know why...