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 the What do you want to know post, Jodi asked: Why did I buy lanolin? I have some and am not sure how best to use it! Lanolin is a great addition to the oils and butters we have in our workshop! It’s an amazing emollient that offers serious moisturizing and water repellancy. It...
I just found this in Voyageur and thought I’d try it out in my products as sweet cherry just sounds so lovely, doesn’t it? So what’s the deal? How does it feel on our skin? What does it bring to a product? Cherry kernel oil contains a balance of fatty acids with about 46.0% oleic...
I mentioned in this post on Friday that cetyl alcohol isn’t an emulsifier. I want to mention it again. It really isn’t an emulsifier. It will not bring together water and oil. It is an oil, so if you mix it with a water soluble ingredient or into a water soluble product, it will eventually...
There’s been a very active discussion at this post on cetyl alcohol. Neither cetyl alcohol nor stearic acid are considered emulsifiers in any way. They are considered to be oil soluble ingredients, like our oils or butters. They have a required HLB value, meaning they have a value that helps you figure out how to...
A lot of the concerns about mineral oil relate to occlusion. (One quote is that it “coats the skin like plastic, clogging the pores”.) If you’ve read any tiny bit of this blog, you know that occlusion is a good thing that helps reduce transepidermal water loss, and that mineral oil isn’t the only thing that causes occlusion. Great...