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.
I find one of the quickest ways to turn a lotion into a cream is to substitute stearic acid for cetyl alcohol. Fatty acids tend to increase the thickness of our products better than the fatty alcohols, although you will experience a decrease in the slip and glide of the product and might even get...
What if you want to increase your oil phase further? You have two choices – you can choose another recipe that has a higher oil phase and a lower water phase or you can modify your recipe to increase the oils and emulsifier. Let’s say we take the recipe from the other day, the less...
While making our basic lotion the other day, we had a decision to make. Do we substitute 2% IPM for one of the oils or do we add it to the oil phase as an extra 2%? We addressed the substitution issue on Friday, so let’s take a look at increasing your oil phase today. ...
Will and Patrick did the most important thing you can do in learning this thing we call cosmetic chemistry – they stayed curious – and both went out to the dollar store to buy lotions. Let’s take a look at what each of them found! (And be warned, this is a long post!) Will: I made...
I know most people, if asked, will say they prefer a drier feeling lotion, but a lot of those perceptions are based upon commercial products that contain mostly mineral oil. Most of our vegetable oils feel less greasy than mineral oil, and all of our esters definitely feel that way. So here are a few...