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.
There’s not much to say about the tight or T skin type. You have no wrinkles and no sagging, and we all envy you. So let’s focus on the wrinkled or W skin type. How do we define aging skin? It is skin that has… dermal and epidermal atrophy (sagging, wrinkling, coarseness) reduction in amount...
What is sun protection factor or SPF? How is it defined? SPF is defined as… the dose of UV radiation required to produce 1 minimal erythema dose (MED) on protected skin after the application of 2 mg/cm2 of produce divided by the UV radiation to produce 1 MED on unprotected skin. In other words, it’s...
A question keeps popping into my head – how do we know we’re sensitive or allergic to something? I see comments by people all the time (not on this blog, but other forums) saying “I’m allergic to quaternium-15” or “I can’t use fill in the blank because I break out”, but I’m always curious –...
We have arrived at our third skin type – pigmented or non-pigmented. This is defined by pigmentation on the face or chest, not by the colour of your skin. The key is that this hyperpigmentation is unwanted, and is generally caused by too much sun exposure. Melanogenesis is a defensive mechanism our skin uses to...
The final type of sensitive skin types is the allergic type skin. This skin type exhibits redness, swelling, itching, and skin flaking when exposed to something to which the skin is allergic. Approximately 23% of women and 13.8% of men in Great Britain exhibit this skin type, and most of the reactions in personal care...