Candybee

I used to know a lady that did the Rolling Thunder rally every year in Washington DC and swore she made thousands at her booth over the weekend during the rally. Just got me to thinking if anyone here does any and what you think of them? I know a lot of ladies go to these rallies and would be interested in B&B products. My friend sold those bandana scarfs that cyclists wear on their head.

12 hours ago, jpmakescandles said:

@Candybee The clean scents by candle science don't actually contain carcinogens or any of the following: phthalates, mutagens, reproductive toxins, organ toxins, acute toxins. I suppose people can be sensitive to fragrances (get headaches or nausea if they hate the smell) or they can have allergies to some chemicals, but otherwise it seems like removing these other harmful chemicals makes fragrance oil significantly safer for use over long term frequent exposures to vapors. Not all fragrance companies can say their products don't contain these chemicals. Perhaps the people who have health issues from fragrance oils have been using ones that do contain acute toxins, organ toxins, and all the things listed above. Who knows...Better to be safe than sorry. I have a "fume hood" that I make my candles in. It's a giant box with an inline fan attached to a dryer hose that goes out the window. No heat sources are used in the box so no fire hazard. It's just for mixing and pouring. I am not concerned about the wax melting "vapors" in my kitchen. Wax is just solid oil. No worse than deep frying. Anyways I also wear a respirator. Between my fume hood and the mask I feel pretty safe. Within 30 minutes there is no more odor at all in the room anyways because the candles solidify in the fume hood.

Candles release carcinogens when burning. All candles do regardless of the fragrance oil you use. That was what I was referring to in my post.

Do you live near any landmarks like a river, creek, mountain, valley, stream, monument, national park, forest, woods? Is your area famous for anything. For example my town is famous for restaurants, skyline drive, shenandoah forest, shenandoah river, national civil war battlefields, canoeing, fall leaves splendor. etc.

A good example is we have a small creek in town called Happy Creek. So a candle company could be called Happy Creek Candles or Happy Creek Candles and Melts.

Are you going to call your wax melts wax melts or something different or unique? You can use that uniqueness in the name.

Or perhaps you have a theme say the 70's or colonial days, gay nineties, roaring twenties. Time period themes make a unique business stand out and create a focus for scent types and names to use. Or a design or logo idea like a butterfly, unicorn, or dragonfly? Are you going gothic, mythical, grubby, modern, classic, etc? Maybe you would like a nature scent theme, or hippie era or tropical paradise theme?

You really have not given us any ideas to go on.  

Have you got any ideas what kind of business you want? do you have a theme? a color scheme, or design you want incorporated into your business?

You have to take into account that you as a candlemaker are working with fragrance oils full strength. Your customers are not getting the amount of exposure to the fragrance oils that you are. So to protect yourself you should be wearing a respirator when making candles. Even using CS so called "clean Scents". All fragrances give off vapors that hang in the air and a good respirator will filter that out.

The actual amount of fragrance that is in a single candle is dilluted in the wax. The carcinogens coming out of the flaming wick are more potent than the small amount of fragrance in the candle so no need for the customer to worry or to put it on the label because they already know its in the candle.

2 hours ago, birdcharm said:

 

These aren't mason jars ... but if you've got a use for 8 oz. blue tumblers, you might be interested in these clearance ones at Bittercreek for 24/$5.30 + shipping.  For me, the shipping comes to about $1+ per tumbler and I'm not looking to do such a thing just now, but if I were, I'd build an order around it to get them.  It's really tempting ... I think they'd look great with silver lids.

 

Blue Tumblers

Actually the ones I have are Ball mason jars. the 16oz size. I had ordered them a while back and had a couple left I had to dig around the house to find. I found two and thankfully that's exactly what I needed. These are also the wide mouth 16oz jars. For my project the blue jars are perfect!! Will show pics of them when I am finished. Thanks for thinking of me re the jars. But I don't need the 8oz so thanks anyway.

This reminds me of the coconut shell candles a while back when they were trendy. Everyone wanted to make candles in coconut shells and sell. Some suppliers even provided the bowls under candle making supplies. Another bad idea.

I have Edge on my laptop I never, never use. But thought I would give it a try and it worked. I can access the threads on Edge I couldn't on Chrome and Yahoo. Pity. I hate Edge and will probably only use it for this forum for that purpose.

Am gonna check to make sure I have the latest Chrome and Yahoo. But seriously both are big browsers and either should work on a large forum. 

2 minutes ago, TallTayl said:

what type of device?

I'm using my HP laptop. Its also my home and main comp. Its loaded with the latest windows 10 software.

Here's another way to put it;

If you click on Browse to see a listing of all forums, scroll down the listings. You see on the left the forum listings. On the right you see a thread in that forum which was the last one posted on in that forum. If I click on the right thread in the off topic listing it opens up. If I click on the forum, then click on the same thread, it won't open up.

I agree, its in the forum itself on any thread. If I go into the off topic forum or the cooking forum and click on any thread, I get nada.

However, before I actually go into the forum there is a place to the right of it that shows the last thread to be posted on. If I click on that thread it opens. But, If I go into the forum itself and click on the same thread, nada, won't open. Hope that clarifies it. Its kind of hard explain.

Okay just tried chrome and it doesn't work either. So yahoo and chrome are the browsers I use and neither of those worked. I don't think its the browser. both are up to date on my comp.

So I signed out twice to see if it changed anything. I still can't click on any topics in the off topic forum. It is also happening in the cooking 101 forum but not the tip topic forum. However, before I actually go into the forum I can click on the thread to the right of the that forum and get in that way. But only on that one thread as it is the last thread that was posted on in that forum. Hope that makes sense.

I even tried signing out and closing my browser. Will try another browser and see if that helps.

Went to the off topic threads and for the last 2 days nothing happens when I click on a thread. I thought it was a dead battery in my mouse or something but other forums work okay. Its just happening to me in the off topic forum.

3 hours ago, Lizzy said:

I used to get most of my waxes from C&S until they started charging insane shipping rates! I'm just a couple of states over and they want $40 ( doesn't seem like much but it used to be like 15$ )  for a 45lb case of wax!! Nope. I'm better off getting my wax from  CW....and that's saying something because we know their shipping is crazy too! LOL

Did you check the shipping cost recently? In the last couple days? My palm comes in a 55lb case and costs $80+ to ship. You better check and make sure shipping is still only $40. I would be very surprised if it is.

Shoot I remember the days I could've bought 2 cases of wax for the price of shipping that one case today. So for 1 case of wax shipped to me would cost me $180+. It just boggles the mind.

I went to C&S to check on the cost of buying a case of palm with shipping costs so I could update my COG spreadsheet. The wax is the same price but the shipping is now $80+ for the one case. Yikes! It has almost doubled since last year. This is why I pick up when I can instead of shipping. But $80 is just Wowee!!!! 

20 minutes ago, kfintoni said:

Oh my I was looking to try and order some more jars last night while ordering fragrance, saving on some shipping. I was comparing The Flaming Candle prices to Fillmore and was shocked. The price of the 16 oz mason on Fillmores site has doubled since last Spring. I understand that there is a shortage but I was a bit shocked as they have always been my go to for jars and lids. They are out of stock but are listed at 10.95 a case, I paid 5.93 a case in April.

 

Karen in MA

I use their economy jars. Price has stayed the same fortunately. I checked their site too when I was recently looking for blue mason jars for a project and decided I better use the couple I have in stock instead. Jars being OOS or the price changes has been a real pain this year. And that doesn't even include shipping thrown in. Shipping out of Fillmore is high for me and I'm next door in VA. So the only way I can make it work is to either drive there to pick up or buy so many cases as to make a price break in the shipping costs.

I bought these unfinished wood boxes a couple years ago and have been using them as my soap boxes. Since I plan to remake my soap biz and launch it next year to a sea themed soap biz I decided to redo the soap boxes too.

My biz colors are turquoise and aqua blue so I wanted the boxes to reflect that and add some bling so they look as decorated as treasure chests with locks, new hinges, feet, corners, etc. What do you think?

How much would you pay for a box like that? These I am showing are approximately 12" x 9" x 4". Was thinking maybe I found a new craft in finishing boxes. Maybe I would do some small jewelry boxes to sell. What do you think?

Pic of unfinished wood box

blue box with silver embellishments

turquise box with gold embellishments

Both boxes side by side

Bottle shortages have been ongoing for months. Like TT said many things are either in short supply or can't be found period. Anytime a jar or bottle or lid I use comes back in supply I buy up as many as I can. But that is only if they come back into stock. This is all suppliers everywhere so you are not alone. Its been so frustrating especially when I sometimes have to use a different bottle or jar or lid only because that is all I can find and I have to get my product out. I just explain to customers about the shortage and they understand and have their own stories to tell.

One last culprit could also be the wick came loose from the tab. Happened to me several times. Once I had a whole bag of wicks that weren't crimped tight on the wicks and the wicks were easily pulled out. I didn't notice till after I poured the wax and saw the wick came off the tab and was floating free. Total pain in the patootie. Had to buy another bag and handcrimp each wick to make sure they were all tight.

Gingerbread Cookies by Peaks is soap safe but can be a fast mover. So soap RT and don't use a SB. FB and Keystone carry Peaks. 

On a side note I have only personally used it in MP during the holiday season and used a gingerbread man cookie mold. The soaps were a sell out everytime. They smelled wonderful.

On 9/3/2020 at 11:23 AM, Grace5810 said:

On a side note, Once or twice I used my heat gun to smooth any uneven tops which actually made the wax melts much more grainy on the outside (the inside still being quite solid.) So, my advice is to avoid using the heat gun on wax melts as it heats up the first layer of wax around the melt at a temperature lower then 180 and gives them a weird surface texture. 

Glad you are having success now with your melts.

RE the heat gunning the tops it does not necessarily ruin or change all wax types. For example I use palm and occasionally heat gun the tops of my candles or my melts and it hardens up without leaving a soft or grainy or textured surface. However, with heat gunning palm tops you can lose the crystal pattern in part or full but it still hardens to a smooth top.

From what I can see my guess is your wick tab was either not centered or not anchored properly which led to the wick moving. What are you using to anchor your wick? and how do you ensure it is centered? and finally, are you making sure your wick is pulled straight and held at center as the wax is cooling after you poured? are you using any wick centering tools or center bars to hold the wick in place as it cools?

1 hour ago, prs7979 said:

I got a small amount of glass glow to experiment with and based on my experience with NG Palm I used CSN's to start with.   

 

I poured hot and flipped when the top set enough.  Cured them for a week.

 

But a couple of them drifted all the way to the side during the first burn.    Not all of them though

 

Is this indicative of holes (i.e. I didn't flip soon enough) or some other issue that I'm not thinking of.   

Wick drifting means the whole wick assembly came loose from the jar as in the tab holding the wick came loose. This can only happen when there is not much of a candle left to burn and the remaining wax is completely pooled and the tab was not anchored to the jar properly.

If you made a candle in a jar and filled it with wax and just burned it the wick doesn't drift.

Do you mean the wick is leaning to one side? Do you have a pic of the candle with the wick in question?

I've had the exact same problem when I worked with a parasoy blend. Had to always check each individual candle by poking holes around the wick then heat gunning to fill in the holes. Sorry I am no help as I eventually moved on to another wax. But I did find that it happened only in jars larger than my 8oz jelly jars. If I made 12 or 16oz jar candles then I had the sinkholes every time that needed to be fixed. Ugh!!!! It ended up being so time consuming I opted for smaller jars and stuck with the jelly jars.