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 I’ve been writing this series on lotion making, I’ve realized there are so many little things I do to make lotions, both in formulating and the process itself, that I wasn’t taught by someone else but learned along the way. And we all have those little things that we’ve figured out ourselves based on...
We know that a light lotion has about an 80% water phase, 19% oil phase, and 0.5% to 1% preservative. And we know we can tweak that lotion silly with any ingredients we want as long as we stay within those guidelines if we want it to remain the consistency of a light lotion (You...
As I’ve mentioned before, a light lotion is one that consists of about 80% water and doesn’t contain lots of butters or other thickeners. This is something you’d use as a body lotion or facial moisturizer as it’s not sturdy enough to handle being a hand or foot lotion. It works out to about 80%...
Yesterday we made a lotion with minimally processed ingredients, let’s make a body butter in a similar fashion. Again, I’m going to use an emulsifier and a preservative, which means I can’t have a 100% minimally processed product. But we can go for something on par with 92% minimally processed ingredients! So what ingredients do...
At least once a day, I get an e-mail from someone wanting to make a natural lotion. I tend to answer this with another question – what do you mean by natural? Infuriating, I know, answering a question with another question, but apparently that’s how I roll. After almost five years of making my own...