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.
I scatter bottles of hand lotion all around my world during the winter – in the car, at the office, beside the computer, on my bedside table – because I consider it essential for the fall and winter months! And I love rice bran oil in this recipe. What do I want in a hand...
What benefits will olive oil offer a body butter? It’s moisturizing and regenerating for our skin, so it’s perfect for any application but especially after sun care. It’s absorbed by our skin well, so it’s going to offer quick moisturizing effects, and it’s going to offer occlusive properties to reduce the transepidermal water loss. The...
Olive oil is a great addition to your collection of oils. With 55 to 83% oleic acid (C18:1), 4 to 21% linoleic acid (C18:2), 1% linolenic acid (C18:3), 10.5% palmitic acid (C16), and 2.6% stearic acid (C18), it offers the best of all worlds in one oil. Extra virgin olive oil is obtain through purely...
Oleic acid (C18:1) is another fatty acid that shows up a lot in the oils we use in lotion making. It is found in olive oil at really high rates (78%) and high oleic sunflower oil (74%). It has only the one double bond, so it has a longer shelf life than those oils with...
Sesame oil (not the roasted kind you’d used in cooking!) is another oil high in linoleic acid (about 40%), with almost equal amounts of oleic acid (45.4%), with some palmitic (9.1%), stearic (4.3%), and arachidic (0.8%) fatty acids thrown in for good measure. It’s incredibly high in phytosterols – 865 mg per 100 grams –...