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.
In this post, You don’t need to use the HLB system with an all in one emulsifier, Anonymous asks: I love your blog and have been reading it for almost a year now. Can you just confirm that the usage rate of an all in one emulsifier is the percentage of the oil phase only? Because up until...
Whew! It’s been a crazy few weeks with loads of youth programs, tons of work, and a chemistry final on the 16th for which I was studying quite a bit. I spent the weekend lounging about playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and feeling really guilty that I wasn’t running about getting things done, but I’m...
There is an epidemic of hair cutting going on around me right now, and it’s freaking me out! Okay, I admit I have issues – the idea of a hair cut just sends shivers through me to the point that I can’t watch movies with hair cutting or head shaving in it (ick!) – but...
In this post on how much cetyl alcohol to add to BTMS-25, Rosi asks: Will our leave in conditioner get contaminated if we keep sticking our hand into it and applying to hair? Maybe. I’m always apprehensive about sticking my hand or fingers into any of my products because you never know what is lurking on...
In this post, Substituting: What to do when you can’t wait to create!, there seems to be some confusion about how to use cetyl alcohol with BTMS-25. Why add a fatty alcohol to a conditioner? They can boost the substantivity of the cationic quaternary compound, which means more conditioning awesomeness for our hair! Fatty alcohols...