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.
Oil based body moisturizers are best used after showering or cleansing as they can trap the water against your skin for maximum emolliency. Think of them as lotions without water, like a liquid lotion bar. As they are oil based, we won’t use a preservative or other water based ingredients in our mix. This recipe...
A dispersing bath oil is a liquid version of the bath melt – you bottle it, and add it to your bath as you need it. We add the emulsifier to the oils to help them disperse through the water, rather than floating in a greasy mess on top of the water. There are a...
I liked my complicated lotion bar so much, I thought I’d see if I could turn it into a balm-like product with a more whippy consistency. I did this by adding more liquids and reducing the solids.COMPLICATED BALM FILLED WITH ESTERS AND SILICONES 20.3% beeswax 4.1% cetyl esters 24.4% shea butter 22.8% cetearyl ethylhexanoate 1.6%...
As we know, a balm is a product intended to help with a condition of some sort intended to be rubbed in, so we need to modify these recipes to help with some condition. What condition could we choose here? How about sun exposure? Let’s say you’ve been in the sun a little too long...
We’ve turned our whipped butters and lotion bars into balms by using specific essential oils and using specific oils and butters (click here and here). Let’s take a look at creating balms that are really softer versions of lotion bars that we’ll store in jars or tins. (Because there’s no water in this balm, you...