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.
This question has come up a few times this week, so let’s take a quick look at the topic. I did address this concept this time last year, but this is one of those topics that it can’t hurt to revisit regularly! The links below can be found in the FAQ, which is now located...
I know this seems like a really boring topic, but it’s one that we neglect at our peril. Temperature is such an important thing for our products, yet I see people arguing against heating and holding all the time. It is vital that we bring our lotion ingredients to the correct temperature to allow them to create...
I can’t believe I haven’t answered this question yet, and I suspect that there is a post out there on this topic, but I figure we’ll take another look at this idea! How do you know how much of an ingredient to include in your product? These are a few of the things I consider…...
This product was originally aqua coloured, and now it’s an opaque green with a slightly brown tinge that you can’t see in the picture. We made this Blue Raspberry fragranced body wash at the end of November with the plan of giving it out at Christmas…and by then, it had morphed into this green colour....
Let’s say you want to make some conditioner, and you want 4 bottles of 8 ounces (about 240 ml) each. How do we figure it out from a recipe based on percentages or weight? The short answer is that you make a 100 gram batch of the stuff, figure out the volume of it, then...