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.
It really doesn’t feel like we’re only three weeks away from summer here in southwestern B.C. – we’re getting rained on constantly, the temperature is in the mid-teens ˚C, and we’re still waiting for strawberry season – but I can still prepare for the horrible heat…I mean, loveliness…of summer. So I thought I’d put together...
Carboxylates are produced by the alkaline hydrolysis or saponification of animal or vegetable fats and result from the neutralization of fatty acids. They are extremely soluble in water up to C18 (or 18 carbons), and are insoluble over C20. If you use an unsaturated oil or butter to produce these surfactants, you might see some...
I wanted to write a few posts about creating cleansers for the different skin types, then I realized that I hadn’t done posts on surfactants for a while. I’ve got some basic stuff from last year, but I thought a more in depth series of posts on the various surfactants we use in our creations...
Point of interest…This is actually a picture of a whipped shea butter, but I was getting bored of using the same pictures over and over again! This might seem like a bizarre concept, adding more oils to your oily skin, and for some people with really oily skin, this might be a very bad idea,...
Let’s formulate a body butter suitable for dry skin! For dry skin we want to include a lot of lovely humectants, oils containing linoleic acid or GLA, phytosterols like ß-sitosterol to help with moisturization and inflammation, anti-oxidants, and Vitamin E. If you have a damaged skin barrier, you’ll want to include oils and butters containing...