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.
This is my new favourite bracelet – please excuse the terrible picture as photography is not one of my strengths! Of course, it’s chemistry based. The large charm is hydrogen cyanide; the smaller crystals are oxygen with double bonds. Yeah, I get my inspiration from all kinds of places! I’m posting the handouts from class...
Hydrovance by National Starch (INCI: hydroxyethyl urea) is a moisturizing agent that can be added to your lotions and water based products at 1 to 20%. It’s hygroscopic, meaning it draws water from the atmosphere (to your skin), so we treat it as a humectant. (In studies conducted by the company, Hydrovance absorbed 82% of...
Isn’t it beautiful? This is the polyquat 7 molecule. The N+ group is what makes this a cationic – the nitrogen makes all the difference! Polyquat 7 (or Condition-eze 7, as the ISP product is known) is a cationic quaternary polymer that can be used in hair care and body care products to impart conditioning...
Honeyquat was made for hair care products – literally! – so including it in a conditioner is a wonderful and good thing. It offers good wet combing and conditioning, and helps with anti-static control. Let’s take a look at a conditioner we made in the conditioning post…. OILY HAIR CONDITIONER – defrizzing, conditioning, moisturizing without...
Now you know everything there is to know about honeyquat…how do we incorporate it into our products? Honeyquat is best used at 5% or lower in your creations, although I do prefer 2 to 3%. You can include it in body washes and toners (see below), and lotions. Adding it to your creations offers you...