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 the Q&A, Rysle asked, I have a question about how can I make bubbles with different colour? What I mean is when we always make bath bomb or bath powder the bubble it come white I want to make a product that change the bubbles to different colour. The short answer is that we...
I know it’s hard to find packaging right now, so it might seem strange that I’m writing posts for products that require a very specific bottle – the foaming pump bottle – but this is how I formulate. I get a new ingredient, I research it, create some formulas, then observe the formulas over time...
In this month’s Q&A, Melinda asked, Why can cationic and anionic ingredients be used in solid (shampoo) bars? Normally, we don’t want to combine anionic (negatively charged) or cationic (positively charged) ingredients together as they’re opposite charges and don’t play well together. But we can make them work because we don’t have all that annoying water...
Let’s say hello to a new solid foamy, bubbly, lathery™ surfactant in my workshop – sodium cocoyl methyl isethionate (SCMI)! It’s an anionic (negatively charged), ester based, solid surfactant in flake form. (You might find it as Pureact SCMI-85 or Iselux SCMI.) It’s considered gentle to mild, and offers thick, dense, creamy, luxurious foam and...
I’m still going through the chat log for the shampoo bar workshop we held on Sunday, June 14th, 2020 trying to answer the questions I might not have addressed. In today’s post, we’ll review a few general questions about the process of making shampoo bars! Ever wonder why it takes me so long to answer questions? I’ve...