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.
One of my favourite new ingredients is Varisoft EQ 65 (INCI: Distearoylethyl dimonium chloride (and) cetearyl alcohol). It’s a green, readily biodegradable, and ECOcert positively charged or cationic compound that works as an emulsifier for lotions and conditioners for your hair. It has to have the pH reduced to 5 to be positive or cationic, so...
On Monday, we started this series – What does it mean if something “improves radiance” or “brightens skin”? – by looking at how we can use humectants and moisturizing ingredients to decrease skin dryness and increase skin hydration. Yesterday, we made a hydrating hand & body lotion for more humid climates in which we added a...
On Monday, we took a look at how we can use hydrating and moisturizing ingredients to make skin look smoother and more hydrated, then we met Lipomoist 2036. Let’s take a look at how we can create lovely formulas that will help with dry skin and more. Making skin look smoother and more hydrated isn’t...
In the April Q&A, Tash asked: I like mucking about with things to see if I can break them. I’ve done it previously by deliberately contaminating my emulsified sugar scrub with bread, fish tank water etc to see how well the preservative system held up. So I was interested to read about the freeze-thaw test in the...
In part one of this question we reviewed Thais’s formula and did a little thinking. Today, let’s look at a few ingredients we could add to her product to make it more moisturizing or hydrating. Thais wrote to note that she used 10% hyaluronic acid gel (it contains 0.1% hyaluronic acid), so we need to...