adillenal

For my outside shows I have it in a walk in design since they can get out of the sun, rain, cold whatever.

I do a quarterly inside show and I have a corner booth and have always set up with the tables flush with the aisles. Lsst month I set it up as a walk in and a table flush with the aisle on one side. Best of both worlds. I will be doing that again.

Now I do one BIG show where I am not on a corner and I set my tables up along the front of the booth because that crowd does not seem to want to enter a 10x10 booth. Can't afford a bigger one so I work with what I have.

Strange isn't it? I am not a big purchaser but am pretty steady. Not that that should matter.

I received a shhipping notice so I am expecting it any day.

I order a lot of colored lids from her since she has what I want at a good price. No problems.

In fact my last order had 100 dispenser lids rather than the flip top lids. I emailed and she responded and sent out the correct lids the next day without any added expense.

I have been buying from her for 4 years and this was the first mixup and it was taken care of immediately.

And yes, I know some will feel I have just been lucky.

I love this site for all things related to formulating.

www.swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com

I factor the additional shipping into the cost of the product. I offer $3.95 shipping. I make soap and lotions so I am not shipping glass jar candles which makes a difference.

As for the prices, based off of most candle stores around here where I live, they are only $1-2 cheaper than most. Also, I price my candles at about 3x my cost, so I still have a great profit margin. How much do you guys mark up your prices? I know some say 4x cost, but that just seems a little high to me. Thanks again everyone!

If others are selling at 1 to 2 dollars higher then I would price my candles higher. Going lower won't increase your business in my experience. AND it is harder to increase prices after you establish a clientele.

When you click on the picture for a larger image, I think on some screens the picture is bigger than the screen. Now on my monitor (which is a very large one) the image is all there. BUT even with this huge monitor the print is still very small. But when I enlarge the picture I can see every detail on the label which is nice.

And your prices are about $5.00 per candle lower than others I see selling the same thing in my area. I would raise the prices now before you get stuck selling too cheap. Just my opinion.

I had to increase to 125% to read it. On my computer the font is SMALL.

Also how do you pick a scent for the candles?

Oh I forgot to say that the shipping estimator worked well. I always like to know that in advance. Good job.

I think she was referring to the oil in a bottle - Crisco brand. The hydrogenated Crisco in the can is listed on soap calc oils list..

I tried both and I dropped both since they are time consuming and I still sold more off of my own website. I go to shows and markets and I get repeat customers that buy from my website as well as customers that have received gifts of my products.

I feel I wasted a lot of time listing, relisting, updating for few sales. The competition is fierce on those sites and you have to really work it to establish a business.

I started small locally and have slowly expanded over the past few years. Nothing is quick it seems. Interent sales are certainly not where I make my money.

I think it has to do with which minerals your water is high in. The clothes started to get stiff and would not absorb water and turned gray. We have a LOT of iron for one thing. Our water will dissolve pipes and fitting in about a 5 year time span. Not too good.

I tried that and it seemed so great for awhile. But we have really hard water and I ended up with a mess so it is back to commercial detergent for my laundry. I guess it was soap scum buildup in the machine as well as the things that were washed frequently like towels and DH's coaching T-shirts. Not good here.

I have spent a lot on specialty oils and other ingredients over the past couple of years but I enjoy research. I love the following site for help

www.swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com

What emulsifier did you use?

There are emusified body butters but the formula I have uses around 45% water. I have seen formulas higher.

Cetearyl alcohol is (I thought) a co-emulsifier. I always use Polawax as an emulsifier in an emulsified body butter.

Stearic is a thickener but some people don't like it. I personally DO like it and use it in my lotions and body butters.

Emulsifiers at at least 5% is a good place to start in my opinion.

I also do mine the opposite way that you did. I add the oils, butters and emulsifiers to the liquid. I do not use a mixer (do you mean stick blender). I just use a whisk to blend it all together but you could use a stick blender. Then as it cools, I stir every once in awhile until it gets cool enough for my preservative (I use a preservative that needs to be added after the mixture is below 120 degrees). Then I add the fragrance.

I am sorry but I can't help cause I can only relate to percentages. That looks more like a lotion recipe to me.

Now my main line is soap and lotion but I tried during the past year to add candles and the soap and lotion keep selling but I barely moved any candles. Who knows why? In fact about the only thing I could sell was a single votive in a votive holder. Can we say cheap? Guess people in my area aren't into buying candles at a market.

I personally started with soap and after I was comfortable with that I started going to shows. Then I added whipped shea and body butters and last to join the inventory was the lotions. Lip balm is also a fairly easy one to figure out also as well as solid perfumes.

Cold process soap (in my opinion, is probably the cheapest to learn how to make. In other words a lot of the ingredients can be bought locally and you can experiment to come of with your favorite combinations without having to buy online. That is what I did.

Good luck and enjoy your venture. BUT it is not a get rich quick line of business. I do well now as a sideline business but it took several years to build my customer base.

I use fresh GM and have on occasion ended up with really orange color but it doesn't show in the final product. Or at least my soap was fine. I don't usually freeze my milk but use cold GM and add my lye slowly so I rarely get a dark orange. usually a nice yellow. When I have to dip into my frozen milk stash the finished soap doesn't look any different than the soap I make using cold GM. I have never noticed a perm smell but then I don't look for it so who knows.

I think that one is over.

Many of the small local type craft shows allow baked goods. My monthly market allows them. The local farmers market also allows baked goods.

depends on where you are. We are in small town America so a city would certainly be different.

And there is a prebuy for Patchouli FO at Moonworks right now.

A lot of milk will separate a bit when thawing. Just whisk it back together. One of my best soaps is made with sour milk and it turns out just fine. The milk is not going to spoil in CP or HP soap.

When I freeze my milk, I freeze in quart dannon yogurt containers since a batch of soap for me uses that amount. I guess I make too much soap to use ice cube trays. I only use frozen milk when I don't have fresh cold fluid milk from the goaties. Still feeding bottle babies so I am currently dipping into my frozen stash. Soap all looks the same when finished - frozen or just cold.

Except I don't consider it an established business if she has not been active in two years. If I quit for 2 years, I am sure all of my customers would have long since found a new soapmaker.

If the business was up and running then $15,000 would not be out of line but for a dormant business in soap area, not worth near as much.