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 let’s say you made yesterday’s recipe, but still consider it too greasy or heavy for your tastes. It’s easy to make a very light feeling, dry lotion by taking out a few things or adding a few things. If you leave out the thickener – stearic acid, cetyl alcohol, cetyl esters, or cetearyl alcohol...
As I mentioned the other day, it seems like the men who contact me want drier feeling lotions – but then again, so do a lot of women. I tend towards the greasier side of the the lotion spectrum, so let’s take a look at a few ingredients and tweaks we can make to create...
Yesterday we made a hand lotion using our esters…today we’ll take a look at making a body lotion by tweaking those ingredients. How is a body lotion different than a hand lotion? I like my body lotions to be thicker and more occlusive. So I’ll switch the cetyl esters for cetyl alcohol and change and...
We took a look at using esters in facial moisturizers, so let’s take a look at using esters in our lotions and creams! Why use esters in a lotion? Esters take a long time to go rancid, so your lotions would have at least a year long shelf life (depending upon the other ingredients). They...
I’ve said it a hundred times so far, but esters are a great way of increasing the feeling of dryness or reducing the feeling of greasiness, increasing the lightness and spreadability, and decreasing the thickness of your lotions or butters. So let’s take a look at a really greasy product – body butter with shea...