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.
In this post, Nedeia asks: I LOVE humectants. I always use glycerin, sodium lactate, panthenol, urea, Na PCA, oats and wheat proteins, I just LOVE them in my products! But I guess I tend to over use them, because sometimes the gels I am using all of them into is sticky. I always use less than...
Thanks for all your input in this thread on formulating for your hair types. In those comments, I noticed requests for quite a few topics on which I’ve written so far. (To see all the posts I’ve written on hair care and products, click on this link for the hair care section of the blog.) When...
I’m all about making recipes from scratch, coming up with a goal and making something awesome that fulfills those requirements…but I’d like to suggest to novice bath & body creators that you spend some time with well tested recipes. We were all newbies once – I spent hours and hours reading recipes, comparing them with...
In this post, Dawn asks: Susan, I noticed you are using glycerin and not hydrovance in the dry skin formulations. Is glycerin a better product for extremely dry skin? I love hydrovance but if there is an advantage to using glycerin with the dry skin issue, I’d like to formulate the most effective lotion. I...
I’m afraid I can’t find the e-mail/comment I wanted to quote here, but someone noted the other day that their body butter wasn’t very thick. I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that our products may take up to a few days to thicken to their final viscosity and not to panic if...