Dustpuuppy

You should have put that one into the Wal-Mart thread. LOL

I have a single electric burner and use an old sauce pan (pot) with a little water in it to act as a double boiler. I keep my pour pot in the heated water, add the wax from the presto pot, then add my dye and fragrance oil. You can put your big glass measuring cup in it as well to keep it heated.

That's what I always did, too. Except for the fact that I always just hung the measuring cup in the presto pot. Just hook the handle over the side. The handle always stayed cool enough to handle, so it wasn't a problem.

Might want to be careful til you know for sure. Your wax may be hotter or your meas. cup might have slightly different glass in it.

The economy won't be down forever. It all goes in cycles, so maybe you could scale it back to hobby status and just be ready to pounce when things improve?

If you'll think back, every time the economy tanks and people cut back to the point they feel like they've deprived themselves... they tend to make up for it once things improve.

A lot of people view hand crafted candles as both a luxury and a bit of a status symbol.

I'd guess that anybody who can hang on till the storm is passed, will do well, when things improve.

Just a thought.

Maybe you could speak to some of the other crafters and lobby the promoters to kick out people who make false accusations?

I also wanted to add that I would never show anyone my suppliers. That is personal information in my opinion and none of their darn business.

I wouldn't give that info to the other exhibitors. Wouldn't bother me to show it to the organizers. Less trouble than the demonstration. Just showing them an invoice for the wax would most likely sooth their qualms.

Probably best to just ask the organizers what they need.

Here's an evil thought:

Make a video where you give a tour of your work area, start in the driveway, with you getting out of the car. Introduce yourself and walk inside to the shop area, taping the whole way.

You get out of the car, look into the camera and say, "Hi, my name is _____, recently some other craft show exhibitors, who are trying to sell inferior products, have accused me of buying my candles from a factory and reselling them."

Then, with a conspiratorial whisper, as you step closer to the camera," I guess it's because mine are better than people of their skills can produce."

"So, I thought I'd give you a quick tour and a little demonstration."

Show your hubby or kids zonked out on the couch, as you go through the house to get to the work area. Show the work area, supply storage and such. Maybe pour a candle, while you're in there. You could do it like they do on cooking shows where you have 4 of the same candle at different stages of completion. One that you're just about to pour. Another waiting for repour. Another ready to demold.

Close by saying, "If any of the craft show organizers still have questions, I have invoices and credit card statements to show where I've bought my materials." "Thanks for stopping by!"

Have that playing in your booth, at the craft show next year.

Acetone (nail polish remover) does a good job on removing it from skin. Because it sticks so well, it is a buttpain to remove.

I guess I'll stick with the alcohol. I was already getting odd looks from the Walgreens cashiers, when I was going in and buying 10 pair of knee high stockings every week, that I used to polish scratches/seams out of candles.

I'm thinking that adding polish remover to the shopping list would add to the legend.

Since I wear a Van Dyke style beard, they already think I'm sinister when I walk in the door, anyway.

I love brutal honesty and I appreciate all the information you gave me but like I said just doing research. If you have any recommendations I would appreciate it. Thanks for you insight and your response. I will also contact some of these company I am buying from now and see what type of discounts they offer. I figured dup was the best way but they say they wont be an exact match.

Not so sure about honesty, insight or whatever. Mostly it was all just flippant bullshit.

Although the math was pretty accurate, I think. And the thing about the paper was true, as well.

Don't want to dash any hopes or such. I've just been down this road with suppliers several times.

Manufacturers protect their distributors. They make certain that nobody can do what you are trying to find a way to do. They have to, in order to stay in business.

There's always a chance that you'll get lucky and find what you want. That would probably be with a small company. But then it's hard to know if they'll still be around, the next time you order. I noticed that one small company I used a couple of times now seems to have been bought by one of the candle supply companies.

And you still have to consider the shelf life of the FO. I used 6 months because you never know what's going to happen. I think most around here use 1 year as a rule of thumb, but when you're talking about several hundred dollars worth...

OTOH, just because a dup isn't exact, doesn't mean it won't be just as good, if you go down that road. They'll generally send you a sample to test before making the whole batch.

Im assuming its more expensive to use this Permatex glue correct?

This stuff sell for between $2.50 up to around $15 per tube, depending on which type and what size.

The $15 stuff is about the size of a traditional toothpaste tube and would probably survive the nuclear attack that topofmurrayhill spoke of.

You'd need about half as much as the amount of toothpaste you normally use. Maybe a bit less. With the cheaper silicone, you can get down to around $5 for that size tube. I'm guessing that the cost per candle is gonna be around 5 cents. Maybe less. You can get it at any auto parts store or at Wally world.

There are about 10 different types. Some of them may not want to stick to glass. You might need to experiment with that part. Never had it fail on anything else though, except the radiator. Even on that it held for a short time. It didn't melt, just didn't adhere to that type of plastic. Found out that nothing else did either, though.

BTW alcohol is the only thing I've found that will get it off your hands. Even with that it takes a little work, so FOs and such shouldn't affect it.

Heating the wax in the Presto to 250 is pushing things a bit.

The candle looks great.

I'm in the minority but I never thought a little bleed was a bad thing. Makes it look like a natural progression than like you stacked them together.

Also, there's not that much bleed there, anyway. I've seen some from much more experienced people with much more bleed.

I have one of those also. Now I am looking for something I can take to craft shows.

I used to use either felt or velvet draped on top of boxes to make table top risers. I just used the same boxes I brought my products in. It was cheap and cut down on the amount of stuff I had to haul in and out. Actually looks nicer than you'd think, too.

It's amazing how creative I can get, when the rent's due.

Here's the kicker. I spent forever looking for something for that purpose. I've had this damned thing sitting here for about six years, right beside me.

( Honestly I've been through several different DVD storage units in that time, but it's funnier this way. )

This one cost me $27. Best buy has one about 4 times this size for under $100, if you ever needed to have a display that held 200 candles.

I can relate to the planning for the future thing. Or just idle curiosity, for that matter.:smiley2:

Take into consideration that FOs have a shelf life, too. Most folks say 1 year. I'd hesitate to figure on keeping a large inventory for over 6 months, though.

If the manufacturer's minimum is 25 pounds, you're gonna need to make 800 1 pound candles in 6 months. Or 1600 8oz container candles in 6 months. That's figuring 1/2 oz per pound of wax. That's about 8%.

And that's just one fragrance. If you offer 10 fragrances, you're then talking about making 90 candles per day, 7 days a week, of the 8oz containers.

At this level, if you bought all your FOs at once, you'd be buying 250 pounds, figuring minimum orders of 10 scents. You won't be able to do that every time, as some scents would sell faster than others. But even if you could, you're still not going to get the same price as the candle supply companies do.

Plus you'd have to have a climate controlled area large enough to store the ten drums in. About 20 square feet. That's about the size of a car, give or take. If you're working out of your 2 car garage, that isn't gonna leave much room for the 10 wax melters you're gonna need to make all these candles, much less the 8,000 pounds of wax that you'd be going through.

Also, the wax and FO would need to be delivered by tractor trailor. They can't go into a residential area. In short, you're going to have to rent a commercial space to work in or get a truck to bring it in from the freight terminal. You'll need an 18 foot box van with a lift gate, probably cost you about $150 to rent one for a day. You'll also need a pallet jack. Those cost about $400 for the cheap ones.

If you rent a commercial space, figure about $1000 per month. Don't forget power, water and sewage costs, too. So you'd better be selling every one of those 16,000 candles.

I used to run a print shop where we used about 80 cases per week of Geogia Pacific copy paper. I called Georgia Pacific to try to buy direct. I was told that I would have to buy a railroad car load to even place an order. And even at that level, I was only gonna save about 10 cents per case. After figuring what it would cost to store it, I'd have gone waaaaayyy in the hole.

I was sitting there thinking I was all big time and shit... til I got off that phone call.

My experience has been that all the shipping companies, including freight lines tend to get sloppy, when business is good. When they start losing customers due to damage or poor service, they get serious about things and watch/fire employees and such. A year or so later they've cleaned up their act and one of the others has gotten sloppy, so they start getting the customers back. Then they start getting sloppy again.

In short, they take turns being assholes.

Peak sells their sugar cookie for $16.95 pp. This means they probably pay around $10 pp for it.

Now consider that they aren't buying any 25 pound minimum and getting that price. Alan is probably buying around 1000 pounds per order, to get that pricing. Maybe they're only buying 100 pounds of that scent, but they're also gonna be getting several other scents, at the same time.

Any manufacturer would have to be crazy to give you the same pricing. First they wouldn't be making enough money off the order to be bothered. Second they would be risking pissing off customers who buy thousands of pounds at a time, for one lousy 25 pound order. No candle supply company in the country would ever buy from them again and they would be out of business.

Would you sell candles at a craft show for the same price you would sell to a wholesale customer? If you did, how many wholesale customers do you think you'd have, once they found out ?

I posted this program in another thread.

It's a free down loadable calculator.

If I read it right, there's something about saving a recipe to a file.

Sounded great when I found it. I'm not a soaper, though, so YMMV.

I can't tell you how to use the calculator but I'd almost promise that whatever you're doing wrong will be really simple and you'll feel really silly.

None of this is rocket science. You can do it.

I've done a lot of craft stuff. It all looks harder than it really is, when you first start. None of it is ever as hard as it looks.

On the zip code thing, look at it this way: If you have the wrong zip on the package, that means about 2 more times the post office is gonna have to handle that package. That's 2 more chances for them to break something.

Even if I agreed that it was their job to look up the zip, it's just one extra thing that can go wrong.

Not to mention the fact that some of them might just kick the thing one extra time for having to go to the trouble.

Just stumbled onto something.

I just bought a DVD shelf at Wally World. 1 foot wide, 4 1/2 feet tall. 7 adjustable shelves. I'm thinking it would be a great display shelf to put some candles into a hair saloon or some such.

Doing a little math I figured I could get 48 pillars into it.

Nice looking, sturdy, wouldn't take up much of their floor space and it's small enough I can get it into the back seat of my Jetta after it's assembled.

Thought it might be a useful idea for some of you.

Alaln buys his FOs... at least he used to. I doubt that these makers would sell to you in the 9 - 10 pound range, though. There would probably be minimums and at minimum order levels your price may be as high or higher than you could get it from a candle supply company.

That's just my experience with most things of this nature. I haven't tried it with FOs, though.

OTOH, you might call Peak and see if there's a volume discount you can get from them.

Not sure about the Hictory

Ijust happened to be cooking some burgers when I posted that. I was using some of that Liquid Smoke ( hickory scent ) stuff on them. If that stuff weren't water based...

Not sure it made the burgers taste any better but it sure fooled my nose into thinking they were going to.

There's also the old trick of wrapping a towel or some such around the mold, so that the candle will cool slower.

Somebody around here used to lower them into an old picnic cooler to slow down the cooling and increase the mottle. You'd have to have a lid on it, of course.

They said it worked for them. YMMV.

I think 450 F is probably an erroneous measurement, unless your candles have been catching fire.

I thought that's what candles do.

Seriously, though, even if those temps are a bit off, I think I can vouch for the rest of that. I've used silicone gasket makers and sealers for years to patch all kinds of things together. Just never thought of using it on candles.

The only thing I've found that it won't stick to is one particular type of plastic. I think it's a polycarbonate. It's the plastic they make radiators out of.

I can't vouch for it sticking to glass, though. That's about the only thing I haven't tried the stuff on.

"Fresh blend of Fir Tree, Spices, and smooth Vanilla notes"

Not what I expected. From the name I was thinking it would be something with amber. Maybe with some coconut and some vanilla undertones.

The Peak website says theirs is a Yankee type. If you're going to the mall, you might be able to eliminate that one without having to buy a sample. If that helps.

BTW, do any of these mentioned have a hickory smell to them?