NattyCat

I had loads of problems getting soy pillars right - I hated the white powdery finish they get. But, a teaspoon or two of castor oil added at the same time as the FO really reduced the powdery look - then, after a few days of curing, I polish with a soft yellow duster to get the small amount of powder off. The castor oil also stops the pillars from cracking, as ecosoya is quite brittle. Thanks for all your positive comments! Nat

Thanks all :-) Cybersix - I don't use bags, I use cellophane wrap which comes on a roll. Just much easier to wrap it around the candle. I get it from a florist supply company or ebay. Then I just snip around the base, fold it over and tape it down, then crunch the top up with a tiny clear elastic band a a pull bow - I can't live without pull bows because I simply cannot tie bows myself!

so pretty! I don't have the first clue how to make rustics! Yours are lovely though.

thanks very much!

Got the moulds on ebay. Item number 8272481483 for the smaller one. The seller isn't advertising the larger one at the moment...but that's where I got them! Nat

i just realised, the photo makes the smaller hummingbird pillar look like it's got a fried egg on top of it!:rolleyes2 It's a flower - yellow centre, white petals!

Sorry, I decorated and wrapped them before I thought to take a photo! Hummingbird pillars are made from a parasoy blend, 70% soy, 30% paraffin, scented in Gardenia. Other pillars are Ecosoya Pillar Blend, no additives. Pink is scented "Cherish" (from Just Scent) Lilac is Juniper Breeze and yellow is starfruit and mango. Decoration is handmade mulberry paper crinkled ribbon and handmade mulberry paper flowers. Nat

made another 35 candles today with 135 - seems to be working out just fine so hang in there - it takes a bit of time to get the right pour temp and there is always a bit of shrinkage, but the throw, both cold and hot is pretty good for most scents. 107 degrees is the magic number for me, with CD 12,16 and 22. Nat

yes you can fill the lids - i tend to use dried fruits, silk flowers or pot pourri, depending on the candle fragrance. Tried embeds, but they just make the glass dirty. Any other suggestions always welcome as I've run out of ideas. Nat

if the wick was tabbed and held with a wick holder while the candle set..then the floppiness wouldn't matter much would it? if you burn a jar for a few hours you only get an inch or so of liquid, which isn't enough for the wick to fall over. Hmmm...I may try some out and see what happens - will let you know the results!

what would happen if you used square braid wick in a container? I ask because in a previous thread I accidently said that I used square braid in a jar when in fact I used cd22 - but that got me thinking about whether there would actually be any problem with using square braid? If, for example, you used #3 that's good enough for a 3-4 inch pillar, so, logically it would work in a jar as long as it was tabbed and attached correctly...what do you think? I may give it a go I have a whole reel of #3 and lots of jars to fill!

Hi There, Yes, the jar actually looks like that but it is taller and the neck is taller - the proportions are about the same though, and I guess because the neck is taller it makes the width look smaller. Could also be the angle of the photograph! Nat

as I said, they are just over 3 inches across - about 3 and a smidgen. The larger jars with the embeds are just over 4 inches across, I can see how my answer above wasn't very clear because I spoke about the embedded jar in the same paragraph as I gave sizes for the apothocary jar. All the text I mentioned about testing, was about the bulb-top apothocary jars too. Are american inches bigger or smaller than UK inches? I thought they were the same? Nat

yep, I thought so too. The actual jar is only slightly wider than the neck opening also. The glass is rather thin though, so I advise my customers to only burn for 2 hours and not the 4 that it states on the safety label. Never had a breakage even though I've burned for longer, but better safe than sorry - (although I have crafter's insurance in case anything bad DID happen!) Nat

Hi All, Will try to answer questions all in one go! The jars are called "apothocary" jars, I'm in the UK and I get them from a company here for about $1.50 each. The plastic stopper comes off so you can put things in the lid if you wanted. The embeds are made from soy wax - they're not "in" the wax, there are lemon slices sitting right on top, next to the wick with a bit of wax poured around them to make them look embedded into the surface. Stearine usually hardens soy wax enough to make actual embeds as long as the overpour is very cool though. Photo below. I've extensively test burned in these jars and the throw is amazing - the opening of the jar is just over 3 inches across, which I think is fine for a jar?? I'm still burning a rosemary mint one which doesn't just fill the room with scent, it fills the whole end of the house within 45 minutes of lighting.

Thanks Suzie, I market the jars as reusable and people complained that they couldn't get the sticky labels off easily - so I bought myself a paper guilotene and just print those tags out both sides on thick paper and fold in half. You can fit a lot more information on them, including info on your other products! I just use a hole punch and raffia. Quick, easy and a clean jar! Nat

I'm in the UK so I guess we have different ones over here. There are some great ones in the USA but the cost to ship them over is insane! I like these ones as the plastic stopper comes off the lid so you can fill the cap with rose petals, or dried fruits or pot pourri etc and then put the stopper back on! Nat

Newest creations - all made today. "Angel" in white, Chocolate brownie in brown, baby powder in pink and in the background there's double layer "St Clements" (orange and lemon with wax lemon slice embeds) Finally getting no frosting and plenty of scent throw with CB135! Nat

Funnily enough, I just made my first dark brown soy candles today to match my chocolate brownie fragrance. Picture can be seen at: http://www.scentopia.co.uk/DSCF0003.JPG I used liquid dyes from Bitter Creek - coffee-caramel brown, lots of black, and when it's looking a grey/brown colour, I added a splash of yellow and then more coffee-caramel, and got this gorgeous dark chocolate brown. Nat

I never seem to be able to calculate just how much wax I'm going to need! Here's the deal: I fill the mould with water to the level that I would fill with wax. I then weigh out the exact same amount of Soy Wax Flakes. I melt the wax, pour the candle, repour twice and I still have quite a bit of wax left over - which is odd! OK, so it doesn't seem such a bad thing...but I worry that my calculations of scent per pound are not working out right due to the fact that despite me weighing out the same in wax and water - there is always wax left over. Get this too - the candle weighs the same as the amount of wax I weighed out - but there is enough wax left over for at least 12 votives (I made a HUGE candle!) My wax is breeding! Anyone else getting this?

Im getting good results with cb135 too. I don't heat the jars - they're just room temperature. I add scent at 170. I pour at 107. Mostly no frosting altho a tiny bit now and then. Smooth(ish) tops, but solved with a slightly hotter single repour of a couple of millimetres. Hope this helps. Nat

Well, at the moment I'm using 135 and as long as I pour at exactly 107, I get no frosting, perfect tops and the candles only need a very thin repour layer on top to make them as silky smooth as I like them. I'm also getting a very good throw with some FO's. I just read that Advanced helped with shrinkage, but Top advised that this isn't the case, so the benefits of advanced over 135 are very few as far as I can tell, as I'm getting great results with 135 - I wanted to get great results ALL the time, and remove the "hit and miss" results that 135 seems to have. Thanks for the input all, I think I'll stick to 135 - Am finally getting it to work and don't wanna have to go through all that testing again with advanced. Nat

Am just about to make my next order of wax and wonder what I should go for. EcoSoya CB135 or Ecoysoya CB Advanced? Would appreciate your opinion...please bear in mind that in the UK i don't have access to any other kind of Soy so the above two are IT!

ah..well see, that's the downside. Can I find the scrap of paper I wrote it all down on? NOPE! I think the dog ate it. I hope I did it the same for the next batch I made, they're curing right now...but we'll see how they come out on their test burns next week! Nat

Hi All, Thanks for your lovely comments and useful tips. I think my dishes may be too small as I can only fit one large and two small scoops in the dish, I can't get 3 large ones in there, otherwise the bananas don't have any room. In answer to someone's question - it's ALL Soy Wax, and I made all the embeds myself with soywax and molds. At the moment it has one wick as when it burns, the high sloped sides of the dish push the wax towards the wick so it sort of hugs itself. To get the wax at the base of the candle I'm going to need to triple wick - but that's for another time! As far as colouring the ice-cream scoops, I'm not sure that would be worthwhile - When I just have ice cream sat in the dish,they slide around, hence the whipped cream wax, which sticks it all together - you can't see the other two scoops of ice-cream at all. So I was thinking, perhaps I should put some colour on it in the form of pinapple chunks and I do need to change the colours of the cherries, strawberries and raspberries - i poured them all from the same wax as it was only a test on my first one. I'm stuck with the dishes I've got at the moment - it's been a nightmare trying to find them and I've got 25 to go through before I can investigate some wider ones! Loving the photos of other people's splits - really good and I hope mine looks like that someday! Nat BTW, the strawberry shortcake candle isn't "a little bundt cake" - its huge, it weighs about 3lbs - LOL I used a real size cake mold for it just to "see" what I could do - if anyone buys it they'll get a hernia lifting it, and it'll need multi wicking! The cream splodges on top are once again, molded and the drizzle is a ready-made icing I buy off ebay!