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.
Hydrovance by National Starch (INCI: hydroxyethyl urea) is a moisturizing agent that can be added to your lotions and water based products at 1 to 20%. It’s hygroscopic, meaning it draws water from the atmosphere (to your skin), so we treat it as a humectant. (In studies conducted by the company, Hydrovance absorbed 82% of...
Isn’t it beautiful? This is the polyquat 7 molecule. The N+ group is what makes this a cationic – the nitrogen makes all the difference! Polyquat 7 (or Condition-eze 7, as the ISP product is known) is a cationic quaternary polymer that can be used in hair care and body care products to impart conditioning...
Honeyquat was made for hair care products – literally! – so including it in a conditioner is a wonderful and good thing. It offers good wet combing and conditioning, and helps with anti-static control. Let’s take a look at a conditioner we made in the conditioning post…. OILY HAIR CONDITIONER – defrizzing, conditioning, moisturizing without...
Now you know everything there is to know about honeyquat…how do we incorporate it into our products? Honeyquat is best used at 5% or lower in your creations, although I do prefer 2 to 3%. You can include it in body washes and toners (see below), and lotions. Adding it to your creations offers you...
This is the blue iron oxide on paper. Behold its mighty power to colour everything it sees, including your hands! So be sparing with it in your eye shadows! As you saw in the last post on MMU, you can use base and micas to get a nice, translucent, shiny blue. But perhaps you’re not...