Sarah S

Nice! Looks like CS? I hope some of those are the wonderful phalate filled fragrances! 😉😂

I have been extremely happy with the fragrances I've ordered from PFO. They are an excellent company.

Way to go @TallTayl! 🙌🙌🙌

NG's Vamp Vogue is fantastic, think black roses and thorns laying on a grave. 

Toxic trance is good as well, harder to describe. Sweet and musky, with a hint of exotic spices. 

The absinth from CS is a good Gothic scent, strong and haunting.

Hemlock Forest from BC is a dark interpretation of an "outdoor" type scent, although I found it to be a bit weak and personally did care for it.

Mahogany Spice and Voodoo Love from CW are scents that I would consider to be gothic, and both are really good and really strong.

I totally forgot about the Pumpkin Chai, that one is really good! It was a big seller for me last fall. Their Pumpkin pancake is super yummy too!

48 minutes ago, Moonstar said:

THank you ! I'll try it out ! Any FO I should try from CandleWic 

Ive only been making melts lately 

Oh yes! They have a lot of great FOs! 

My favorites include:

Voodoo Love - strong patchouli and spices, exotic and sensual

Mahogany Spice - woody, warm, masculine but not in a cologne kind of way, hard to describe but a great winter scent when you get tired of bakery and. Christmas 😊

Salt Carvern - salty, dry, hints of citrus, very fresh and clean

Coastal Kale - salty sea spray, fresh picked and juiced kale with a squeeze of lemon

Buttersotch - crazy strong, very true to the candy @Belinda clued me into this one!

Hot Buttered Rum -  recommended by @GailC, it is warm, sweet, and subtle, very nice for winter

Vanilla Verbena - just like B&BW, I got it for a friend to make soap and lotion with, but it is still very nice in wax. Sweet and green, it reminds me of spring.

Those are ones that I order often, but they really have a lot of fabulous fragrances. Their dupes are good, specifically the Van Verb I mentioned above, VS Him, VS Bombshell, and B&BW Moonlight path, I've tried and liked.

Stay away from the Spice (it's weird), the Smoked Ginger (gross), and plain Blueberry (weak).

HTH!

7 hours ago, Moonstar said:

Sarah, where do you get CBL 141 wax ? Is it specificly for melts ?

It's one of Candlewic's custom blends. They say it is for pillars and votives, but it makes an excellent tart wax. It can handle a high fragrance load, has a nice opaque appearance, and is nice and hard for shapes or clams. It can get a little bumpy on the surface as it cools, but nowhere near as bad as KY 133.

I would also suggest a double wick for that. Try starting with HTP 52 if you have them. Or zincs as @bfroberts suggested. Wick on the diagonal (square container, correct?).

I've successfully wicked a few tins with HTP 73, 83, and 93. Really depends on the fragrance.

Have you worked with CBL 125 before? I find it's finicky behavior toward FO to be more like soy than other paraffins. It will throw most FOs like crazy, but the wick sizes can really vary from FO to FO.

All that being said, I haven't done much with that wax in tins, they just didn't spark my interest much. So YMMV! 😊

I always go to Christmas Splendor for the holidays. I did just pour a tester of Flaming's Alpine Cheer, which is very nice and I think might be a new fave.

For fall I go straight to the warm spices, and I love Flaming's Chai with a little extra vanilla for the warm and cozy! Another fave is CS Cinnamon Chai.

I just poured a tester of ICS's Zuchinni Pumpkin bread, which I am super excited to burn, it smells divine! I am also trying their pumpkin ice cream for something different. 

My big disappointment this season has been BC's Pumpkin Pie and Aztec's Pecan Pie. Both smelled good OOB, but have failed to deliver in both CT and HT. The fragrance is flat, weak, and smells like a dollar store candle. 😣 At least they make good bathroom candles. 🙃

The soap needs to be thin like water for it to foam properly with that top. The amount of foam will vary depending on what the soap is made of, so in a broad sense, yes some will foam better than others.

What wick are you using? I have wicked the Palm 2 votives with Premiers, HTPs, and CSNs, and although the Premiers do ok with (for a votive) a big wick, I think that CSNs have the nicest burn and the best throw.

I have really tried to get other wicks to work with my palm wax candles, because I am terrified that CS will discontinue the CSNs. But in every palm candle I've made, from container to votive to pillar, they have out performed the others.

That being said, I have yet to try the NST treated RRDs, which I hear do well with that special coating for acid resistance. I'm having a hard time justifying spending money on more wicks when I have one that already works. 🤣

Like TT said, the shell on the palm votive is what sets them apart from other votives, so you're walking a fine line of not-too-much, not-too-little. Usually I lose the shell about halfway through the life of the votive. 

I'm trying to get my daughter to love votives. She burns candles in her room with her door shut, and with a 8-12oz container it can get overwhelming. I really think a votive would give her a nice fragrance witout destroying her olfactory receptors. 😂

I know that Candlewic sells their "Country Lane" waxes to AC Moore, but I have no idea who supplies the Michaels stores.

Try looking at Candlewic's pillar waxes for starters, their CBL line is excellent, and the pricing is much better than the hobby stores.

On 10/10/2019 at 12:08 PM, Quentin said:

@The Candle Nook This is interesting. Are you saying that you've settled on one wax that works for all your container candles and all your different fragrances, and/or all of your pillar candles and all your fragrances? I'd love to be able to hear more about that. I probably have ten or more different waxes, and that's ridiculous. I've been trying to find the one best container wax and the one best pillar wax, but my approach has been haphazard at best. 

Good God! 10 waxes?? Pillars?? All your fragrances? @Quentin, you must be so frustrated!

I used one container wax for at least a year before I branched out. Now I use one paraffin and one palm for all the candles I sell and the majority that I make for myself. I'm not above playing with other waxes for the fun of it, but I really only focus on those two. Same with containers, I have two sizes that I focus on. I will wick other containers (like awesome pumpkin shaped bowls!) for myself, but that's just to play with.

I have the same philosophy as @The Candle Nook when it comes to fragrance. If it doesn't throw in my wax, I don't struggle with it. Got no time for that!

Oh yeah, and I use the same palm pillar wax for pillars and melts. I bounce back and forth between a couple paraffin waxes for melts, but I think paraffin melts are more forgiving anyway, it's hard to mess them up. 

I am an enthusiastic graduate of the KISS school of thought. 😂

15 hours ago, bfroberts said:

CBL 130 from Candlewic

That is a lovely wax, and if I didn't detest soy I would use it more often. The texture is just gorgeous.

5 hours ago, TallTayl said:

Short reply for those who ask why you’re not selling XYZ yet...

 

would you open a {pick one from the list} after only doing it for 4 months?

 

- restaurant

- bakery

- auto Repair shop

- hair salon

- vet practice

- coffee shop 

- make up studio

- child care/preschool 

 

don’t be beholden to anyone else’s time line. 

 

Good lord, that sounds like common sense! 😂

I will confess I began selling candles after about 6 months of serious testing, BUT:

- I use an easy paraffin wax

- I only tested one container, one wax, and one wick series

- I only offered 4 fragrances that I was super confident about

- and I only sell locally on a very very small scale, I'm not trying to run a full-scale business

It's been about a year for me, maybe a little more, and I am in the black. But my initial investment was small, and "in the black" for me is a few hundred dollars. I'm not sending the kids to college on this income. 😄

I strongly believe that the size of your goal directly impacts the amount of resources you need to commit to achieve that goal. If you're dreaming big, you need to invest big. And that includes your time more than any other resource.

6 hours ago, franu61 said:

Another one on the plus side.  You can sell me some of your stash    Oh, wait, was I supposed to talk you down ?  Lol

 

That was my idea! Lol!!

Gail, the 4 hour drive would deter me, but you sound pretty excited about the trip. Why deny yourself that happiness? It's not like you go there all the time. 

Have you used their Napa Valley fragrance? I've been burning that one recently, it's beautiful!

Tipsy Cottontail

Boozy Floozy

Burbon Brûlée 

My crowd loves anything alcohol related. 🤣

Candlewic has a nice straight cranberry. Nothing fancy, great mixer.

Where did you order those from? I would like to try some of the NS-2 ones myself, in palm wax. I saw some... Candlewic maybe? But I think they only had a couple sizes, or some other problem.

I've never used any of the Problend waxes, but if it's a wax for tarts, there's no reason you couldn't pour it in a jar and wick it. You would have to do a re-pour, and you might experience some significant shrinkage and rattling in the finished candle as the wax will pull away from the walls when it cools.

Do you hold hatred in your heart for HTPs? That's what I would use. I love them. 

I've used the 73 and 83 successfully in that jar with a similar wax.

I'm lucky, Candlewic is just a couple of hours away Fromm me, and it's sort of on the way to visit my family in NJ. So I do that's detour a couple times a year and I get a few cases of wax, a few pounds of FO, etc.

Fillmore is also just a couple of hours away, but that would be a major detour. Just not worth my time. I discovered that if I have my cases of glass shipped to my work, just over the PA border, it is about $10 cheaper than having it shipped to my house. And I only live 8 miles away from my work!! Crazy! So I just have stuff shipped there now, lol.

I love Garden Dirt from NG for the same reason, it adds a wonderful authentic earthiness. 

I find that I often add some of Flaming's Golden Rum or Kentucky Burbon to bakery scents to make them a little more "grown up".

And I'll add patchouli and/or musk to pretty much anything that isn't a bakery scent. 😁

Oh, NG's Rain Barrel is another great helper fragrance, it is such a pure watery fragrance!

Great topic!

Looking on the bright side, hopefully all the old fragrances will go on clearance! 😂

I would much rather see ads from forum users than random companies!

Great testing procedures! You are learning a lot!

Joy wax is so soft, it's really best to avoid a full MP until you're at least halfway down the jar. In my experience, a full MP in early burns is going to give you a hot sooty mess toward the end. 

Try smaller wicks, or a cooler burning series like TT suggested. I love HTPs, for that's size container I would start with an 83.