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 this post, Katie posed this question: I also read that you do not consider there to be any natural preservative. Your post was from a little while ago, so maybe you have changed your thoughts on this? I should clarify that sentence – there are “natural”* preservatives, but I have yet to find one comparable...
In this post about making whipped avocado butter, Katie writes: I am just wondering why you did not use a preservative in this product? I just made a whipped shea butter for the first time using sweet almond butter, shea, vitamin e, and essential oils. It sounds like its consistency is similar to yours and it...
Just so you know, this scrub uses melt & pour soap and is from this challenge (click for the post to find the recipes) as Petra and I tried to duplicate a Lush product. I used this mold from Voyageur – click here – one I use for a lot of things! In this post,...
I’ll be getting back to duplicating products in a few days, but I thought this was a really important topic for learning how to formulate and duplicate! Will commented in this post…I use liquid germall plus in my own concoctions and haven’t noticed anything go bad, but I typically use a batch of lotion within...
As I mentioned in this post, I’m really enjoying Cooking for Geeks, a book I originally bought for Raymond, and I’m reading a lot about safety in the kitchen. Although I’m not a fan of comparing cooking to product making, there are some points we can take from it when it comes to product safety....