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.
Malic acid (aka hydroxybutanedioic acid) is an interesting ingredient. It’s considered an alpha hydroxy acid found in things like apples and grapes. It was first isolated in apple juice, and we find a lot of it in unripe fruits, which is what gives those fruits the tartness we associate with lack of ripeness. Alpha hydroxy acids...
How many cliches do we have about apples and health? An apple a day can keep the doctor away. Powersauce helps you unleash the power of apples!* Umm, okay, that’s all I can think of at the moment, but you have to admit, there are few things that seem as wholesome as apples. We can...
Happy first day of summer! I guess there’s no better way to celebrate summer than to talk about fruit! Fruit extracts offer so much to our products – phytosterols, polyphenols, vitamins, flavonoids, and anti-oxidants – and they sound lovely on a label! Just think about it for a moment. Peaches and cream, raspberries & apricot, strawberry...
In the why did I buy that post (either this one or the other), I’ve noticed requests for ingredients for which I’ve already written posts. So here are a few posts you might have missed… Decyl glucoside (click, and scroll down a bit) is a very mild non-ionic cleanser that works well as both a...
Tara suggested the SCS-CAB surfactant blend as one of those why did I buy that ingredients (if you’d like to make a suggestion, please click on the link and leave a comment there!) SCS-CAB blend is a surfactant blend of sodium coco sulfate and cocamidopropyl betaine (about 34% to 37% surfactants). It has a pH...