The home of SwiftCraftyMonkey Formulating Inc.! Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys). Often strange, occasionally useful, and always worth a stop as a point of interest on your journey through the Intertron.
Apparently holiday time means loads of playing in the workshop, but less time working on the blog. I have so much to write, I admit I’m having trouble figuring out where to start. I’m hearing back from my testers about the eye liner sealant gel and I’m waiting to hear from other testers about the...
I addressed this the other day, but I think I need to say it again as I’ve seen a three posts or e-mails in the last two days referring to glycerin as oil soluble. Glycerin is water soluble. It is the very epitome of being water soluble. Let’s take a look at the chemistry –...
Baking soda and oil will not create a soap. There is a fascinating process called saponification during which oils and a very alkaline thing like sodium or potassium hydroxide are mixed together to create a soap. We can’t extrapolate this to mean that every alkaline and every oil will mix to create a soap. Lye...
I think it’s important that we know how our ingredients work, so I thought I’d take a look at how to interpret a data bulletin. What is a data bulletin? It’s a document produced by the supplier of an ingredient that gives you all kinds of information, such as the INCI name as well as...
I’ve shown you this picture many times before, but I present it again as an illustration for this post! Both bottles contain the same liquid – my toner recipe – but I added a ton of extracts to bottle 2. When I made the product and added the extracts at cool down (below 45˚C), it...