The home of SwiftCraftyMonkey Formulating Inc.! Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys). Often strange, occasionally useful, and always worth a stop as a point of interest on your journey through the Intertron.
Stearic acid is a great bar hardener, and I like to use as both a bar hardener and emollient in my body and foot scrub bars. Let’s take a look at the body scrub bar today and the foot scrub bar on Monday. What do I want in a body scrub bar? I want something that...
Stearic acid is a natural inclusion in a cream. In fact, you can thicken any basic lotion into a cream by adding some stearic acid. We took a look at a hand lotion yesterday. Let’s take a look at a cream today. Actually, let’s back up a second. What’s the difference between a cream and...
If you’ve never used stearic acid in a lotion before, this is the lotion formula I recommend as a great starting point. It’s a small variation on the basic lotion you’ll find in the newbie section of the blog, but it’s a great way to learn what stearic acid brings to your product. As I mentioned...
Poor stearic acid. It’s often overlooked for its glidier, silkier cousin cetyl alcohol, but this fatty acid is an inexpensive way to thicken a lotion, anhydrous body butter, lotion bar, and more. Stearic acid is a saturated, long chain fatty acid with 18 carbon molecules, which is to say it is a chain of carbons...
I’ve heard from a few people that gel toners are all the rage right now, so I thought we should try to formulate one. As an aside, I have turned a toner into a gelled toner in the past using Amaze XT, but I’m hearing that it’s hard to find this ingredient, so it’s time...