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.
There is quite a lively debate ongoing in the bath & body community about what kind of preservatives to use in an oil or emulsified scrub. (Heck, there’s a debate about whether we need to use a preservative in a scrub, but I’m firmly on the side of “yes” for that one!) The question is...
I still have some foaming bath butter in my workshop, so I thought I’d make a hydrating and moisturizing scrub for the winter months. I find foaming bath butter on its own makes my skin feel a bit tight after using, so I wanted to add some moisturizing ingredients. I thought I’d add some oil...
With the cold winter weather here and promising to get colder, I thought I’d make an emulsified sugar scrub with watermelon seed oil. It’s a good choice as it contains a lot of linoleic acid, which will help speed up skin’s barrier repair mechanisms. Let’s take a look at how I modified one of my...
I hate it when I hear “last minute” on the 18th of December. I’ve barely started shopping or crafting, and you’re calling it last minute? But I thought it might grab your attention, so I used it in the subject line of this post. For shame, Susan! There’ll be coal in my stocking this year!...
In this post, Experiments in the workshop, Shanna asks: I created one of your minimal synthetic ingredient lotions and it turned out perfect!! Love it. However, I made the stupid mistake of adding exfoliating extracts namely rosehip and lavender not knowing at the time that they were exfoliating lol. So now I have speckled bits of...