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.
As I mentioned in the first gel post, carbomers and surfactants don’t tend to play well together. But we’re going to force them to be the bestest of friends by choosing our surfactants wisely and putting the ingredients together in the proper order. I made up this formula – the Gardener’s Hand Scrub – for...
I know you’re probably sick of this recipe for toner, but it works well in a gel format. You can also use this as an under eye application with a few tweaks, and it does feel nice and cool for the summer. (Can you tell I’m not a fan of being warm?)So why make a...
Adding aloe vera to gels can be tricky because gels don’t tend to like ingredients filled with lovely salts and electrolytes. We like a good challenge, so let’s figure out how to make an aloe vera gel with cationic polymers and moisturizers! For the aloe vera gel, we’d ideally like a ton of aloe vera...
I love making gels – they aren’t hard to create and they have so many uses. There are a few ways to make gels – with a polymer like Ultrez 20 or with cellulose – but I’m going to concentrate on the polymer method as I haven’t had a chance to play with cellulose yet...
I just loved this colour so much, I had to include it this week. We’re calling it “(Everything’s) A-OK” because Wanda shouted, “I made Big Bird!” when she saw the final results. I love this colour. It’s yellow, it’s sparkly, and it’s yellow. Yellow isn’t a colour we think about a lot when making mineral...