Siren12

I got a sample of CS Fraser and have already tested it, it smells nice. it had a good throw in GB 444 for me after 3 days of curing time (so shorter than i normally cure my candles). it is just a straight up evergreen scent, i'm not quite as good as distinguishing the different evergreen scents as some other people on here but i thought that it was pleasant and smelled like there could be a tree in the room with me. 

great points Old Glory. My booth is in a shop within a larger antiques mall, the store I am in has a lot of re-purposed items or re-furnished furniture pieces. I suppose i would call it shabby chic as its not really rustic. The style of the shops vary so much that it draws also varying customers in, there are men that come in for vintage records, some vendors carry 1950's - 1970's items, others do the shabby chic items, vintage. 

This summer I sold out of my Raspberry Sangria candles, I also sold out of my Raspberry Vanilla. I sold a good amount of my bakery scents like blueberry cobbler and creme brulee, but the clean/ linen scents have not sold well at all. The Lavender and English Garden candles I had also sold well.  

(I am in Massachusetts) 

So based on the bakery scents from the summer it seems that the Apples and Maple Bourbon will probably do well.

So i have a very small booth @ an antique/ Vintage shop. I really dont need to carry a lot of inventory ( although this will be my first Holiday season selling and i actually am impressed with the constancy of my sales over the summer so i dont want to run out either, i'll probably be constantly making candles every weekend). There are so many scents!!! Of course fall is my favorite. 

I already have candles poured for CS- Blue Spruce , CS- Apples and Maple Bourbon, CS- Pumpkin souflee , and CS- Apple Harvest.  I have fear of missing out with all of the different fall scents that are available. How many do you guys tend to carry at one time for the seasonal scents?

any good suggestions/ tried and true sellers? I was thinking of doing an order from RE. 

I was thinking of Rustic Lodge, and a Pumpkin one - Im not convinced about the CS-Pumpkin Souflee - it smells alot like my cinnamon vanilla i poured (i like the sound of pumpkin cheese cake or pumpkin creme brulee )

any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. 

I guess that i would go with #1 if her name cant be changed with the font from #2. 

No problem, i found that sight doing a quick google search of " 5" diameter glass vases". maybe doing a search like that if you haven't already will help you find something?

I totally get wanting a closer supplier,there is one supplier that i found, whom i love. they create custom jars and have all different materials, prices for the items aren't bad either but the company is in Australia!!! uggg, i ordered a few things a while back but cant justify it because of the shipping cost. Nothing in the USA exists like this company (at least i haven't found them yet)

i like both of them, can you do her company name starting in caps with the font for the 2nd label? i do like the font on #2 a little better but its throwing me off that her company name is all lower case and the scent name starts uppercase. 

also i love those jars!! i cant help you with where to get them so you dont pay so much in shipping. I wonder if the dollar store or  something like that has similar ones? maybe an event store like saveoncrafts.com or lightsforalloccasions.com? they carry glass vases for weddings. 

https://www.wholesaleflowersandsupplies.com/4-x-5-glass-cylinder-vase.html

I have only used CS pumpkin soufflé and i feel like i get good results with it in GB 444, but.i also dont have another pumpkin scent to compare it with. This post makes me very tempted to try others.

Vicky was the first one to greet me when i joined a few months ago and always had great tips and suggestions. I am sorry to hear about her passing and my thoughts go out to her family

 ( i feel sad that i only saw this now )

I have found that 2 weeks really make a difference in the performance of the candle. I feel like i get a better throw results on candles that have sat for at least two weeks. ( i use GB 444 soy)

This could be different depending on waxes.

I love the cork! 

I looked at real corks afew months ago and found some online in bulk but remember thinking that they cost too much for me to make the money back ( cork trees are struggling so cork prices have gone up, wineries have even stopped using real cork because of the cost) 

Ugg this is one of the hardest things for me. Especially since i make small amounts my cost to make it is pretty high. I use the 3x to 4x cost to make and the price I sell at I feel is good, then i look at local candle businesses that are bigger than mine and they sell for more than i sell mine, i am going to have to see how my fall/holiday goes and adjust my prices accordingly. My summer was kind of slow but i pretty much expected that. 

Good luck! 

So last night i got some CS samples including the fraiser fir ( i personally think it smells great oob). Just wanted to throw that out there. I also got CS pinecone sample- also pretty good oob.

I  got a sample of driftwood- which is vanilla, patchouli, sandlewood and other scents they say on their website.

I did a test of the two scent mixed 2 parts fraiser fir/ 1 part driftwood, and it actually smells pretty good together! Im going to make a small test candle tonight. 

If the blend works i may call it seaside holiday or something like that (also goes with my mermaid theme)

Thanks so much for the tips Trapper! I haven't had much time to think about decor for the booth lately just making sure that I have a good amount of each scent available right now.

I have sold at least one candle each month which I think is pretty good. I have added the most recent photo I have of my booth, I sold all 3 of the red jars ( black raspberry and vanilla scent) in the first month or so, they sold right around mothersday.But the sandalwood vanilla hobnail candles have not sold I think I'm going to paint the jars a different color and rename it - maybe driftwood? Something more beachy. 

I also started to dye my candles and sold 3 of the pink ones which were raspberry sangria ( only made 5- this was after mother's day too).

I still need to work on my signage ? but so far I guess its a good sign that my candles pretty much have been able to sell themselves. 

Still working on it, maybe the fall will yeld more time for decor and signs. 

- Brigit 

i dont sell large quantities of candles but they are my main supplier, i am on the east coast and the have good shipping to me in MA. I buy 50lbs of the GB444 and as long as i order other supplies (usually order jars) at the same time shipping isn't bad at all plus it only takes a few days. I also cant think of a scent that just didnt work in my candles, i usually had hot throw issues by not letting it cure long enough. 

I am having issues with opening it in chrome, I couldn't open it at home on my computer just sat and attempted to load and I can't open it at work but it could be my works firewall. I needed to take my i phone off of WiFi to load the page but it didn't load right either ( images didn't load) 

?

Yea! All of the jars that I would love to use are all custom orders by these large companies and I just can't find them. Or if I can find them they are $8-10 each and clearly I can't spend that much and still make my money back :-(

Hi everybody,

I was wondering if anyone knows where I could order ribbed glass jars like the ones I attached pictures of. I love the purple glass but know I probably won't find those but if anyone knows where I could find clear ones that would be great. I looked at Filmore but didn't see the I could have just missed them.

Thanks :-)

On 6/21/2016 at 3:23 PM, wthomas57 said:

So I have a really good tip for you...If possible... its good to use some material under your candles that doesn't draw out heat too quickly. For example, wood isn't good as it will suck our the heat faster than normal and that can cause shrinkage. Counters probably not near as much.

 Ideally...metal is great. What I have done since my pouring tables are a wood finish, is I have this padding that keeps heat in (sort of if you are going to bring a hot dish to a party and need to keep it hot during travel). I have lined my tables with that and it helps. The truth is having any solid surface under your candles is going to pull heat out faster than if there was no surface underneath. Well, since we can't pour and cure candles in mid-air you have to find the best alternative. To me... its either the material I use or metal shelving. 

 

This was the kind of information i needed! it makes so much sense why my candles have been settling poorly recently. I have been pouring and leaving them to set on a wood table it was fine when i was making them in 90deg weather in my stupid hot apartment but since its been cooler they have just not been turning out too well and was becoming a fight. once we move into out new house i will need to find some kind of metal table/ rack to pour the candles on. 

THANKS SO MUCH! ;-) 

i use Golden Brand 444 soy wax, it is supposed to hold up to warm temperatures better than their 464 but i haven't used 464. I do 1oz per pound of wax in my soy candles and it usually works well for scent. which wick you go with will also affect burn time and hot throw. 

ubure- sounds like those will be beautiful candles, if i could make candles as a full time job thats how i would want to make them. All packaged and labeled beautifully with custom scents. they sound wonderful. 

wow, the only reasons I started to sell candles is because 1) my friends and family kept asking me and 2) i wanted to keep making them and knew that i would have too many candles to give away. It also took me about 2 years of making them for myself and family to decide to sell them and i  only take orders of ones i have made before i would no way want to sell a candle to someone when i have never made it before. Just adding color to my candles has changed the wick i need. I have so many testers going right now its frustrating feeling like i am wasting supplies but its necessary.

 Also $80 a candle! shoot wish i could get those prices. 

i wish them luck. 

i've never ordered anything from Alibaba because usually what i want ( such as fancy jars) you need to order palates or 5000 pieces or something minimum. I have read that you should order from shops that have been in business for a good length of time such as 5 years, there is ranking at that point that the shops cant pay for, i guess shops around 1-2 years old can cheat the ranking system. so i agree dont money order and be prepared for it to take a long time to get to you since the shops are usually in china/ Asia. 

I use Golden Brand 444 (soy), i decided to use it when i was making candles as favors for my wedding. it had good reviews on CS and they said it holds up to heat in summer weather which i was concerned about since they would be getting warm sitting while being stored in my apartment. 

i found that i liked the hot throw and got lots of compliments on them about how good they smell, they also looked very nice and candle science gave a really good suggestion for wicking so i decided to stick with it when i went to make more candles. 

good to know, thanks Vicky. 

It could just be a lack of patients on my part then, and partly the way the wax is reacting to the addition. i ordered more sizes of wicks to try out. I'll make more testers. 

so I use golden brands 444 and have had good luck with that wax, but have never added color. I just bought some liquid color from CS and added it to some test candles and have found that the ECO 14 is too small for my larger container and that the ECO 10 is too small for my 8OZ square jar when they usually work just fine no matter the scent. Does adding color usually affect the way the wick works in the wax?

i only added one drop of the color into a pound of wax for each of the scents that i was making testers for.

i tried the eco 10 in my 8 oz square jars which was too small took two burns to get a full pool and also the eco 14 in another test jar which was too big. I ordered a pack of eco 12 wicks to see if that works. I was also thinking that maybe the candles just needed to sit longer, i only gave them 2 days to cure because i was anxious to test them.  

my larger jar is 18oz and a round hobnail jar that the eco 14s usually work well in without any color, i was going to double wick them with eco 4s since it is only 3.5inch wide. 

any suggestions welcome, i was just wondering if this happens or if there is something odd going on. 

thanks. 

i bought the insurance through the indie business network, it was super easy to sign up for and since you join the network to get it theres lots of added benefits. From what i was finding from researching on here and the internet it was cheaper to join their network than to try to get it from an insurance broker on your own. i feel way better at least have something