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.
Sarah asks in this post, Lotions: Making a cream: I made an unscented cream yesterday for my friend with very sensitive skin. I left the cream in the bowl over night with a stainless steel spoon in it. Today I noticed on one side of the spoon the cream has been discoloured (purple in colour). From...
In the What do you want to know? post, Nicole asks: When I first started making anhydrous products, my opinion was that they were the best possible thing for my dry chapped winter hands and dry feet, and that lotions would be better for me for summer. My logic was that if some oil is good...
As the goal of this blog is to set you on fire rather than handing you matches, I thought we’d take some time to look at the ingredients that might benefit dry to really dry skin. What do we know about dry to really dry skin? We know that really dry skin probably has an...
PHOTOAGED SKIN (original post found here!) How do we define aging skin? It is skin that has… dermal and epidermal atrophy (sagging, wrinkling, coarseness) reduction in amount of collagen hyperkeratosis (thickening of the stratum corneum) reduced number of melanocytes, Langerhans cells, and fibroblasts shortening of the telomeres on our chromosomes reduction in sebum production What...
A lot of the commercial moisturizers you see are pretty silicone heavy, and we know silicones are a great way to offer barrier protection (dimethicone) and behave as surface smoothing agents for aging skin. I can guarantee if my mom likes a moisturizer, it’s likely to be quite silicone heavy. They offer quite a lovely...