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.
You might remember our series to figure out what a polar oil might be – part one, hydrocarbons and part two, polar oils – as we struggled to make that darned TKB Thickening clay work. This was supposed to be part three at the time, but we went on holiday and the computer died and...
Brassicyl Valinate Esylate is an “amino acid lipid” derived from the amino acid, valine. It’s cationic or positively charged, so it acts as a conditioning agent that’s substantive to hair and skin, but it isn’t a quaternary compound, like behentrimonium methosulfate, behentrimonium chloride, cetrimonium chloride, or polyquaternium 7 to name a few. This ingredient is...
In my newest formula for an emulsified sugar scrub, I used myristyl myristate to thicken it and offer a more glidy and less greasy skin feel. Let’s take a look at this ingredient! Myristyl myristate is a simple ester, a waxy one with a melting point of 38-40˚C. It’s slightly polar and non-ionic ester. It...
Di-PPG-2 myeth-10 adipate (or Cromollient SCE) is a PPG ester we can use in just about every product we make, which is quite the claim! PPG esters are surfactants with a hydrophilic or water loving head and a lipophilic or fat loving tail, so they can bring together water and oil as a surfactant. They’re...
We met this ingredient a few years ago, but I didn’t go into much detail, which is kind of weird as I often go into too much detail. Let’s take another look at coco caprylate.. Coco caprylate is an ester of “coconut alcohol, caprylic, and capric acid”, in other words, a fatty alcohol derived from coconuts...