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.
Oil based sprays are a great way to play with exotic oils to see how you like the feeling of them on your skin. Most of these oils are expensive, so using them at 10% to 20% in a body spray with a carrier oil you already know and like gives you a chance to see if...
Oil based body moisturizers are best used after showering or cleansing as they can trap the water against your skin for maximum emolliency. Think of them as lotions without water, like a liquid lotion bar. As they are oil based, we won’t use a preservative or other water based ingredients in our mix. This recipe...
A dispersing bath oil is a liquid version of the bath melt – you bottle it, and add it to your bath as you need it. We add the emulsifier to the oils to help them disperse through the water, rather than floating in a greasy mess on top of the water. There are a...
If you have some butters around and still have some supplies left over from making bath bombs, why not try making some bath melts? These are like bath bombs in that they contain the citric acid and baking soda necessary to make them break apart (with little to no fizzing), but they contain the butters...
I liked my complicated lotion bar so much, I thought I’d see if I could turn it into a balm-like product with a more whippy consistency. I did this by adding more liquids and reducing the solids.COMPLICATED BALM FILLED WITH ESTERS AND SILICONES 20.3% beeswax 4.1% cetyl esters 24.4% shea butter 22.8% cetearyl ethylhexanoate 1.6%...