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.
I’m having a love affair with this anhydrous eye shadow primer – originally found in this post, but I thought I’d share it again with more detail (with plans for an upcoming SnapGuide visual tutorial). What I’ve created is a basically a lotion bar with very dry and less greasy feeling oils and butters with...
I stumbled upon this scrub, Fresh Brown Sugar Polish through Sephora.com, while reading the newspaper this morning. At $65, it claims to be anti-bacterial and hydrating for “thirsty skin cells”. The site claims that it offers the “restorative, antibacterial properties of sugar”. The paper claimed that the scrub has become a “cult-classic in the beauty...
I love lotion bars. They’re super easy to make and you can customize them in so many ways! But what is a lotion bar, exactly? These are generally solid-ish, anhydrous products made with oils, butters, and waxes. The basic recipe is generally 1/3 butter, 1/3 oil, 1/3 wax, but you can make loads of modifications to...
I hope you’ve had a chance to make your whipped butter by now, and are ready to share your thoughts on it! What recipe did you make? What did you love? What didn’t you love? What will you change next time? Please share your complete recipe (percentages or weight, not volume) in the comments! I...
When you start out making bath & body products, we can get bumfuzzled by all the terms for different products, which makes it hard to figure out what to make. We might see a recipe and think we’d like to make that, only to find out that it isn’t what was promised or it was...