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.
We’ve made a regular lotion (about 70% water) and we’ve made a thick cream (about 60% water), so let’s take a look at light lotions. They are great for body and face – you might call them a moisturizing milk or a facial moisturizer. They’re fine for bottling in non-pump bottles as they are quite...
I don’t tend to take pictures of lotions – surfactant creations are much prettier! – but this is an example of a little kit you could put together of your body butter, scrub and, and bath salts. Plus, I was getting tired of not having pictures on the site! So you’ve made your first...
So far we’ve been making basic lotions, tweaking the ratios of the various ingredients to get what we want, but there are other ingredients you can add to lotions that will change the thickness, texture, and glidi-ness (yes, I know this isn’t a word, but it fits!) I’m making up a short list here that...
So what makes a body butter cream different than a foot cream? We want the same thickness, but we’re going to be adding more light oils so it’s not as heavy. And let’s change the stearic acid to cetyl alcohol so we can get something more glidy. And we’re going to increase our butters to...
Now you know the basics of lotion making, let’s tweak our recipe to make a cream. What’s the difference? A cream is much thicker than a lotion due to the lower water content. A cream belongs in a pump bottle or a jar; a nice bottle with a disc cap that you have to squeeze...