Tallbabydoll

The reason why doing research for yourself is important when it comes to supplies is because of shipping costs. Wholesale supplies plus has clamshells and tart molds and they are in WI so for me they are probably the closest. But there may be another supplier close to you that may have a higher per piece price, but the cheaper shipping cost will make them cheaper in the long run. This is information that everyone will have to figure out for themselves. This process is especially important when it comes to heavy shipments like wax. It also saves some $ if you buy most of the things you need at once, it'll save shipping in the long run. Like if you decide to get say clamshells, a few tart molds, some liquid dye, some cello bags, etc. It will usually be cheaper to do the math and figure out what place makes this purchase all at once the cheapest, and buy it all at once from the same place. Instead of buying this from here and that from there 2 weeks later and pay the additional shipping. Plus using the search feature up above, most topics have been covered here many times, and you'll find a ton of info already gone over. HTH

Ok I've had the worst day TRYING to make canes today. First off I made two pic embed canes, went to pull them from the molds and they both stuck, and they stuck well!!!! Had just cleaned them and forgot to use mold release. Took forever fighting to get them out. Finally did and cleaned them up again and repoured one. This time my mold sealer fell off one of the wick holes (using a 3 wick mold) and the wax flowed right out. Got that mess cleaned up, cleaned the mold up again, put new moldsealer on that spot, checked the other to, and thought they were secure, and poured again. Well I was wrong, one of the other spots wasn't secure and it happened again. Well I thought I'd stick it in the water bath and try to save it. Well at some point water must have gotten into the mold, cus when I poured the melted wax back into the pot, which I did slowly in case of water and had no problem til the last bit, the pot went nuts. My presto started popping and big bubbles, thought it was going to explode. So I unplugged it and left it til tonight. Thinking I'd let the wax solidify and the water would be at the bottom. Well I turned my presto back on saw the wax slide down so thought I'd remove the wax in one big chunk (I had left to sticks in it to make handles when it was still liquid) Well the sticks broke, so I turned it upside down on a cookie sheet to catch what little wax had melted. But little did I know the center had not solidified yet and wax overfilled my cookie sheet, ran all over and off of my counter, down the cabinet doors and on to the floor, splashed onto my countertop appliences and me! I cleaned everything back up and threw in the towel. This has been on heck of a day. :mad:

Thank you very much everyone for the very kind comments.

Warning the pic is bad, no camara so I used my scanner. The first is a botch so I tried my hand at a crackle, scented sugar cookie. Not sure if I like it or not. The second is my second attempt at a rustic, not to bad, scented tuscan nights. Just wish I could figure out how to keep the frosting on the candle instead of leaving it in the mold, and have it go all the way to the bottom. The third is my 3rd attempt at a rustic, scented English Ivy. The 4th is a chunk with matching overpour scented Strawberry. Last is a red and burgandy chunk, which I let bleed into the over pour a little to much on this one, scented Mulberry. I like this color combo with a light bleed usually, but think it was a little to much this time. Thanks for looking.

How bout Long N' Strong Banana, hehehe Good Luck

Just so ya'll know, this post was from January. Sorry to say, I haven't seen Satin around in quite a while.

Oopsy had a typo, I meant to say I use a candy mold. The melts only weigh .1oz or 5 grams each. So 1.2oz wax will make a dozen melts. Even if there were 24 swappers the envelope would still only weigh less than 5oz to mail. To save on time and packaging swappers could just wrap each one in plastic wrap, put a sticker with their names on each melt and post here the fo name and supplier. I got the candy mold at walmart for like $2.00 for anyone who's interested. Mine are star shapes, but they come in a million different designs like hearts, cresent moons, duckies, etc. I fully understand how this idea wouldn't work for those who only make B&B since they wouldn't have wax. I personally dont like the "sniffies" because I found in the sample swap that ALOT of fos smell almost the same oob. It wasn't until I got them into wax that I got a true sense of what the fo was supposed to smell like. These are just my thoughts, and the melts were just an idea to swap scents that wouldn't mingle or cost much. As for what scents to send, participants could post what fos they have to send and others could vote on which one they'd most like to try. The scent that gets the most votes from each person is the one they send? Just an idea. HTH

What about maybe a melt swap? They'd be smaller than tarts, so it wouldn't cost much in wax or shipping, and folks could get an idea of what scents smelled like in wax? The scents shouldn't intermingle that way like with the qtips, at least I don't think they would. I use a candle mold and I can make about a dozen melts with 1 1/2oz of wax. Dunno how much this would help?

Just thought I'd throw out an idea of a swap I hosted before and it worked out beautifully. It was a fo sample swap. Swappers sent me a box of 1oz fos and I swapped them with other people fo sample. I had everyone send a "wish list" of a few scents they were interested in trying, and tried to send them what I could based on what came in. To match suppliers and scents was to much. Everyone wanted the same suppliers, so I'd suggest going with just the scents, if someone even wanted to take that part on. Basically if you sent me 15 bottles, I sent you 15 bottles from other peoples boxes and if say you wanted to try bananna nut bread, dreamsicle, and lemon pound cake, and those were available, I sent those as part of your 15. Everone paid their own postage to and from hostess. It was easiest to do the flatrate boxes cuz of some samples coming in glass bottles, and a few swappers only sent like 6 plastic bottles, so they only sent postage to cover what it costs to send 6 plastic bottles. KWIM? This works much better than the round robin because you don't have to wait for months for the box to make it's way around, and no one gets stuck with what no one else wants. Problems I had: One person sent me 1/2 ouncers, large bottles with only 1oz of fo, a 4oz bottle with 2 oz of fo, most sent at least one sample of sex on the beach, so it was hard not to send everyone that scent back, but at least it was a different supplier that they got back, a couple of boxes came late, and I had already done up some of the boxes, so those late boxes made it difficult to swap everything out and match up wish lists. Had to open some of the boxes that were already done back up. That's all I can think of right now for pointers. HTH

Does candle making stay fun? Hmmmmmmmmmmm I guess my answer would be yes and no. When I'm making a candle for a request/order I hate it now. Most of my sales have been for pic embed hurricanes. There's no creativity involved, therefore I now hate making them. When I was making pillars, if they were for others I felt very pressured to match my family/friends requests and I was making them according to there wishes, so no creativity, so that wasn't any fun for me either. But when I could just pour whatever and however I wanted....just play....Yeah that's fun. Well until you try a technique that you cant seem to conquir, then that's just frustrating.

I dont make these or container candles so I cant speak of experience, but I would think that tins would be the best idea for these. I would think that the tin itself would heat up therefore melting the sides as well as the bottom, no seal to blow. Diamondcreek I looked at your site out of curiosity, and yours are different than any others I've seen. I thought 100% soy is 100% soy how can that be different. It's the fact that it looks like you either bought "soy beads" or made your own and filled up jars with them. If you made your own, would you mind sharing how you made them? THis has been a topic of threads many times.

I think Krinstine hit the nail on the head. Buying supplies in bulk, mass production, and importing cuts their costs tremendously. As well as bulk shipping. Their costs are cut in every way imaginable. Therefore we will never be able to sell them as cheap as they do and not take a loss. Also I've seen an improvement in the quality of the candles sold in many locations like Walmart, Pier 1, etc. The part that really burns me about this is we used to have the advantage of ours being unique using cool looking techniques. But everytime I go looking seems like they've got our techniques down too. For example I saw people here making hurricanes with cinnamon sticks or starlight candies (embeds) then I went to walmart and they had them, and they looked great and were HUGE for like $10.00 Yes I think it goes without saying that sales will be lost to a less expensive competitor, and you will have people say things to you about it. At least I have. One time my ex boss told me that he could get 4 candles (a box set) from Walmart for the price of one of mine. I told him that you get what you pay for. Mine are made with top quality supplies, smell great with a great scent throw, have been throughly tested for a proper burn, etc, and that they burn for a long time. He said that since he could get 4 of them, they would still end up lasting longer, that they smell good enough to get his woman in the mood, and he could care less about the quality of the supplies. There are many people like this. You just have to know that you'll never be able to match the prices, so you'll never be able to please these type of people, so don't worry about them. Your market will be the people who do care about buying high quality candles that wont put soot on the walls and in their lungs and all the other benifits of our candles. Focus on that, and put your energy into getting those sales. Let the cheapos get their cheap candles elsewhere, who cares:wink2: .

I thought about this myself at one time and here's what I was thinking, but if you use straight soy, I doubt they'd work. Also these methods would not produce uniform sizes or shapes but it would make small pieces of wax. One idea I had would be to put out a large piece of wax paper dip something into the wax and let it drip onto the wax paper. Something else I was thinking but would produce a very un uniform shape, but make things go much quicker, pour wax either very slowly in a THIN stream from a pour pot or place wax into something like maybe one of those yellow cleaning gloves and put a small hole in the tip of one or more fingers and let the wax flow into a water bath then remove wax from water and break up the ribbions into smaller pieces. Or make chunks and shave them, so you'd have scented wax shavings. The point behind this product is to have the wax small enough to melt fast and mix scents in a tart warmer. I'm thinking any of these methods would do just that. Currently I use candy molds and make small melts. They are small enough that you can melt 5-6 of them in a tart burner (at least mine will hold that many) so you can mix my melts to make new scents just the way they are. So I decided not to pursue this variation. Good Luck.

You can use a heat gun and turn it upside down to get the build up off, if there is any. I've heard that mineral spirits works. But I know that fo will work if u have any that you dont like and dont mind using that way.

Arent people funny. They always want what you dont have. I started with pillars. People requested votives, so I started making those. When I actually got testing done and got comfortable enough to sell those, people started asking for containers. LOL A friend sent me some container wax, and that was enough to tell me that I'm gonna stick with what I already know. Ok for the relief holes, they mean to poke all the way down to within 1" from the top of the candle/bottom of the mold. You dont want to go to far and touch whats going to be the top of your candle. I personally dont poke that far, only about half way down, but that's up to you. I am not going to advise against those instruction cuz the author has been doing this way longer than I have. You'll find that candlemaking in general is a very individualized craft. What works for most might not work the best for you. You need to view instructions more like guidelines, then make them your own. Both seamed and seamless molds are both good, with their own advantages/disadvantages. Some people hate dealing with the seam so they like the seamless, and I believe it's easier to get a rustic finish using this type of mold. But they get knocked over easier because there is no base. It's also more difficult to use wick pins which are used on the outside on pillars. There's instructions posted on the use of those. Just run a search. The advantage of using wickpins is you know you'll have a straight and centered wick, just like with votives. I personally just got some pillar wick pins myself after years of not using them. I found that even though I had the wick taught, and it looked centered at the top, once I started burning the pillars, the wick was not centered all the way down. It was almost always bent in the middle so it was burning closer to one side as the candle burned down. Plus it saves time using a pin, so you dont have to worry about wicking the mold. Now I'll just throw a tabbed wick in after the candle is finished. HTH

How important is it to you that you have a product that is exactly like the product thats already on the market? Oh that sounds bad stated like that now that I reread it. But not sure how else to ask the same question. I'm just thinking of other ways to get a similar product, but wont be small uniform pebbles.

I tried to email you, but you have that turned off, and you havent been here long enough to recieve PM's yet. Are you looking for just solid natural colors? Are you looking to have pictures embedded or flowers? How many are you interested in getting. We have different candle makers, many who make hurricanes, who specialize in different effects. A little more detail will help us to know who to recommend. For example I make hurricanes, but if you want flowers, there's another that comes to mind that makes BEAUTIFUL floral embed hurricanes that I would recommend way above myself.

LTD Commodities has them for $7.95 a piece but only come in 2 colors. I'm gonna order a few for Christmas gifts. What I like is that these are a basic electric candle warmer, a plate that you can place a jar candle on, and it comes with a removable heat tempered matching bowl that you can place tarts/melts in. So your customers could use these for either product. Havent looked into the co-op so dont know if this is a better/worse deal. Just thought I'd let you know. HTH

Havent tried anything from them, so can't answer your question. But I thought I'd mention that I do like alabaster's dyes very much, and they have over 30 colors to choose from. I recently got my first dyes from candlewic, and they are resonably priced. I've only tried the red so far, and seemed like I needed alot, but you always do with red. So I am not yet going to say that I do or dont like the quality. Only draw back there is that they have a $25 minimum order. But if you need other supplies, or lots of colors, it's not hard to rack up $25. Not trying to start a problem, but if people dont know the answer to your question, they probably wont post. To be honest, after reading your second post I wasnt going to post at all. But then thought, well if someone doesnt bring this to her attention she'll never know that the foot stopping will turn people away from trying to help at all. They may not even read your post. Sometimes it takes some, time even days to get a response. So have some patience.

Not sure if u mean containers as in jars for candles, or B&B containers, but wholesalesuppliesplus.com has both I think and they dont require anything but payment lol. Good Luck

I have to agree with Bruce. I loved the sample I tried of Lonestar's Downey April Fresh. I've only heard good things about JS's oil and their version was on sale so I went ahead and ordered a pound from there, I was disappointed. Not even close to Lonestar's. JMHO But I haven't tried anything else from Lonestar to give an opinion on.

Wow Scented, really love the cranberry, wonderful work!

Actually Eugenia I made this with you in mind because you said you liked the draped layers. It's the first time in a very long time that I was able to get my hands on a couple of pounds of pillar wax. The one side is mared but I'll go ahead and send it to you.

Wow thank you everyone for the sweet compliments. It is scented English Ivy, I know the name of that scent doesn't match the colors, but I wanted to work with black and I don't have any scents that match that color in my mind. Thats one of the 3 good sides, only one side got ruined.

I think I might know the answer to the question here. Most if not all skewers are made from Bamboo. Bamboo doesn't burn, not supposed to anyways. Not like other woods. At least this is what I have been told.