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.
Petra wrote to me with a challenge – could we try to duplicate Lush’s Sugar Babe Sugar Scrub? We both took up the challenge, and here are her results so far…Batch #158% sugar29% baking soda7.2% cream of tartar2.9% SLSa2.9% virgin coconut oilwitch hazel used to bind it together. Petra’s results: Batch #1 fell apart too...
Okay, so let’s try another attempt at making a sugar cube recipe. (The first attempt didn’t go all that well!) Here’s what I tried this time…40 grams white sugar30 grams baking soda10 grams mango butter – I thought the shea was too soft10 grams cream of tartar10 grams melt & pour soap (white)2 grams fragrance...
Petra wrote to me and proposed a challenge. Could we come up with a recipe to duplicate Lush’s Sugar Babe Sugar Scrub, a bath bomb like scrub that manages to remain hard enough to cut into pieces when dry, but would offer exfoliation and moisturization in the shower? Here are the ingredients…Fair Trade Sugar, Sodium...
Won’t someone please think of the pirates?Winter is coming, and this means red cheeks and dry, chapped skin. Moisturizers can be a great help, but what about our manly friends with beards? Moisturizers can leave their beards a lank, greasy mess, but the skin underneath needs a little love! We know linoleic acid can help...
I do love shampoo bars, so I thought I’d make up a visual tutorial to share the love. If you want to follow along, you can use this recipe. This is the recipe I’m using for this batch… MELTY INGREDIENTS 30% SCI flakes 30% SLSa 15% DLS mild 10% Bioterge 804 3% cetyl alcohol 3%...