Kerven

Citral... FO's with citrus notes? Isoprenol... No idea. That's just great. Issues with soy waxes and now FO's have to be retested. Murphy's Law at its finest. Is this expected to impact burn performance/throw or fragrance profile?

I think I watched a video months ago about Chesapeake Bay Candle and I could have sworn it mentioned that they use custom fragrances. Would have to dig around on Youtube to find it... Found it. Somewhere around 12:30 one of the owners mentions working with fragrance houses. Youtube video That was several years ago. Who knows what they're doing today. I'm very curious about the chemical she mentions but doesn't name at 3:40. An emulsifier?

Chesapeake Bay lists Snuggly Sweater as having notes of: warm wool, lavender, rose, white amber, vanilla, and musk. It's also listed as an ozonic/aquatic scent. BBW lists these notes for their Sweater Weather: fresh sage, juniper berry, eucalyptus, and fresh woods. Yankee has a fragrance called Cozy Sweater that looks to be discontinued (?) but there are dupes out there (The Candlemakers Store). Notes: floral, musk, patchouli, warm amber. The Cozy Sweater fragrance may be closer to Snuggly Sweater. Sweater Weather might be a potential as well, but the scent description seems to vary wildly. For example, compared to BBW's description, WSP gives the following notes: citron zest, cyclamen flower, warm amber, ivy, golden sandalwood, midnight jasmine, and oakmoss. Big difference! You'll probably have to browse around but even then some suppliers are way off mark in their descriptions. I'd try both!

I hadn't thought of waxed paper. I was imagining having to dip and somehow hang the wick to keep it straight - like making tapers but with one dip. The thought of having wax dripping all over the place (if I'm doing it, it's going to happen) made me cringe a little. I use a bucket under the faucet of my presto pot to catch drips. Might be able to rig something high enough to do a few feet at a time and have it hang over the bucket but, until I need a lot of wicks, the waxed paper method sounds best. Thank you!

Hmm! I need to read up on priming wicks. Is it a messy process?

Quick question. Where did you get your square braided wicks? All I'm finding are unprimed spools.

Found these: Glassnow's 8.5oz heavy glass votive Smaller than the OP wanted. Glassnow has two top styles for them as well, but the price is a bit steep overall.

That's the thing. The top didn't harden completely. There was a fairly decent sized pool/hole that refused to harden, which I've never seen before. Even the wax around the wick set up. As the rest of the candle hardened, that pool grew more shallow until it finally set. The bottom and sides set up first. I'm going to see if I can find a decent camera and grab a picture. It looks absolutely bizarre. Maybe the status jar's base was too cool. I did forget to wrap the jars as I would for a longer cool down.

It's a container candle. The palm wax (a pillar palm) was blended with co92 and cetearyl alcohol. The fatty alcohol "should" have helped to slow down the rampant crystallization. I'm guessing I used an incompatible palm wax for this formula and my cetearyl is the wrong ratio of cetyl and stearyl. If air pockets are a natural trait of palm wax... I give up. That's too much trouble for me.

Am I the only one who experiences this phenomenon? I don't mean wet spots. It's the reverse - a labyrinth of caverns and air pockets inside the candle while the outside looks perfectly normal. This time, everything went smoothly at first. The ingredients blended perfectly. It took the color and fragrance well. However, after pouring, it started to set up on the perimeter earlier than anywhere else. I figured I'd have to poke relief holes - not unexpected. Oddly enough, a portion of the surface didn't form a skin, film, or anything. I thought, "Alright, there's my relief hole. No need to bother." Guess what? The entire candle set up without that spot of wax on the top setting until the very end. You could sit there and watch that little hole with molten wax in it become more and more shallow as the rest of the candle set. Eventually, it turned into the entryway of a cavernous air pocket. Topping off wouldn't help since the tunneling is so extensive. If it hadn't been for that one spot on the surface refusing to setup, I'd have never known about the subsurface conditions until burning. I'm at a loss on what to do now. This candle was part of a batch of wax blends I'm testing for educational purposes (trying to get an idea of how certain additives perform), but if palm wax is going to keep doing this I might have to give up on testing blends with palm in them. Maybe I'm using the wrong palm wax... I couldn't find palm 6910. How are people making fantastic, flawless palm container candles....

I see no wet spots or extreme frosting from heatgunning... I'm jealous now. Oooh, fir and a resinous pine - that sounds nice! Did the Sandalwood Incense have any patchouli in it? I'm going to have to give square braided wicks a try since I'm determined to use up this 464 before switching to something else.

The majority of ECO's that I've used have done that at some point. It's usually very slight and only at the tip. Aesthetics aside, as long as there wasn't any smoking, mushrooming, or wildly dancing flames, there was no problem.

Holiday Pomander Pomme d'ambre - if it's more on the perfumey side and the apple note is discernable.

How was the throw?

Do the prices on the site include the extra $4/lb or will the fee be applied when everything is ready to ship? That is, if the minimums aren't met.

That's like when a business claims something along the lines of "100% natural coconut/soy wax" and leaves out the other goodies. Is the composition of that wax 100% natural coconut and nothing else or is the coconut portion 100% natural coconut and the rest is not natural? Not that hydrogenated coconut oil is a naturally occurring product... Just give me the ingredient list and I'll decide whether or not I consider it "natural". Stop with the semantics and wordplay.

@Darbla It's an oz sample size I grabbed during one of their sales - an impulse buy. I used half of it to test wicks with, hoping the pungent OOB notes would mellow after being poured (two tests, one FO!). No luck. I think I was expecting more of a delicate orange scent. Instead, it's a pungent "green" floral scent with a strong lilac note, a bit of lily, and the slightest amount of citrus (unless I'm imagining it). I've not smelled an actual orange blossom before so I can't say whether it is or isn't true to life, but it doesn't seem like a "fake" floral. In comparison, when my lime tree is in bloom the fragrance is nearly a tenth the strength of this FO and not as in-your-face floral. A bit perfumey. Honestly, it reminds me of something I smelled at a nursery's houseplant section and at a florist but I can't remember what it could have been... lilies, daisies, mums, lilac, violet, rose... Personally, I wouldn't call it an orange blossom fragrance but with a little added rose or hydrangea FO maybe a floral shop fragrance or "bouquet". Come to think of it, it does smell an awful lot like a lilac YC candle I have around here somewhere.

Just about every floral scent I have. CS Orange Blossom is at the top of the list. WTF was I thinking with that one? It's not a terrible, rank, putrid, vile scent, it's probably quite nice... if I liked strongly floral scents. I should have known better. Oh! CS Whiskey. That's absolutely a WTF scent. I don't even like actual whiskey. The smell and taste make me gag just as much as this FO. WTF was I thinking? Brambleberry's Winter White. WTF. Why did I buy such a large bottle as a sample? It has powdery notes. I dislike powdery notes. I think it was the lure of mint in the mix that drew me in. Four years later and I still have an almost full bottle.

Village Craft & Candle has the paraffin waxes. I have no idea what brand of soy they sell. Candle Wacks has the 4625. No luck finding 464. There are two Washington state suppliers approximately 100 miles from Victoria: Swans Candles and Brambleberry. Not certain if they have what you need.

I wish the looking glass spray didn't have to be sprayed on the inside of the glass. A mirror finish or faux-mercury glass jar would be great!

That's why I was thinking about it - the smell. We use an artificial tree and the lack of that nostalgic Christmas tree scent really takes away from the experience and I'm a bit over it. I might stop by one of the tree lots and see if they have any trimmings available then stop by a nursery and see if they have an antidessicant spray for wilting. If that doesn't work, I guess I could offer to prune the neighbor's cypress. At least I'd have a convenient source if I need to replace anything. Then again, I could whip up a bunch of candles and smelly things with a nice fir FO. Now that's an idea - I'll blend some fir, spruce, cedar, juniper, eucalyptus... but nothing compares to the real thing, IMO.

Do any of you use evergreen trimmings during the holiday season? Do you preserve them or replace as they dry out? I'm thinking about using some here and there but very reluctant to. This house is warm, dry, and has plenty of circulating air in the winter. When it comes to holiday wreaths, garlands, swags, and such, it's a giant dehydrator. I've read several methods. Soak the trimmings in water overnight to green up and restore moisture, allow to air dry until no longer wet, spread out and spray with a product called Wilt-Pruf or some other natural antidessicant. Lightly crush branch tips and soak in water for a day or three then spray with hairspray (as though I need -another- fire hazard this time of the year). Glycerin treatments for certain plants. Frequent misting. Dip in floor wax. The list goes on. The glycerin method seems interesting and simple but there is limited information on its use with coniferous plants. I guess that's a good indicator that it doesn't work well - probably too viscous to be readily absorbed and with the evergreens going into dormancy they're not going to be very thirsty. The floor wax (I have floor sealer with acrylic that I used to glitter the inside of clear ornaments) sounds interesting as well, but I don't want stiff foliage. I thought about dipping in wax but the thought of flaked wax everywhere makes that idea an absolute no (and it's a fire hazard). What works for you?

Candles and Supplies has an 8oz madison jar that has similar measurements to CS's straight-sided tumbler. Their 8oz straight sided jars are sold out. Specialty Bottle also has the madison jar but the price is steeper. Fillmore has the madison jar as well. I believe they have lids for it. It looks like the madison straight-sided tumbler may be slightly more narrow and taller than the CS straight-sided tumbler. The difference in diamter looks to be almost a fifth of an inch.

Candlewic has 30% off UPS ground shipping on orders of $75 or more today. 30ShipBF. Of course, I placed an order last weekend...

Mine arrived as well. Interesting! The fragrances I thought I wouldn't like I ended up liking. Going to show these to a few others to get an idea of what would and wouldn't be a hit. Personally, egyptian dragon is knocking my socks off. Pink sugar is nothing like what I expected (that's not a bad thing)... I know I've smelled it somewhere before. Was the original a perfume? I'm certain I've smelled this before... but where... I too noticed that some of these are blending very well but I'm not certain which. I had them spread out close to one another and caught a whiff that was amazing. I think it was pink sugar and either vetyver cafe or egyptian dragon with a hint of sweet amber.