Violetsexoticcandles

I haven't, because I have so many wicks I thought I'd try the ones I have first. Kinda poor, here.

I don't know about the tumblers, but the 8 oz metro jar seems a bit wider than the 8 oz jelly jars. I was able to wick the metro with a cd14 in palm wax, but when I tried to wick a jelly with palm, the 14's didn't cut it, even though they worked fine with soy and worked with the metro. Weird, huh? You'd think a smaller diameter jar would be ok, or would be a torch, with the same size wick that worked in a larger diameter jar, or that it would need to be wicked down. It's so much fun beating one's head on the counter after weeks of testing! I feel your pain, mere; I've been struggling with wicking 3" palm pillars for weeks. Sigh. Good luck!

Yup just from her description, sounds like palm to me, too. Never have seen a soy that was like sugar, in granules, but I have seen palm like that. I hope she gets it straightened out. Soy and palm are two different worlds, as I've discovered. And hot throw can be greatly affected depending on which wax, how hot FO added, etc...

Try Northstar Candle Supply- their dye blocks are veggie-based. I use them for primary colors for those who prefer their candles as natural as possible.

Holy Crap! What were they thinking? I've heard and seen some crazy stuff, too. Why they do it, who knows... then again, before I started making candles, I didn't even realize that I had to burn votives in a holder. LOL.

I hear you! I make soy candles but use fragrance oils. EOs are just too expensive. BUt I had a retail shop interested in having me make her candles (turned out to be a big nightmare, really) but wanted EOs. I told her I'd work with her but couldn't afford to supply the oils (not too many can if they are pure, in my opinion). She backed out on a deal that we'd been discussing for months. There are plenty of fish in the sea, though! Don't get disheartened.:smiley2:

Welcome! :party:

Please, please only do this with SOY. With Palm wax, it's not soft enough and will cause you a lot of heartaches and other issues. I tried the pliers with palm and the jar exploded on me. I think the bruises only faded last week! A word of caution.

I've single wicked my 16 oz wide mouth mason jars with an HTP 1212 with great success... and funny enough, the first one I did I used white tea & ginger I think it's possible to wick a 4 incher, but I've never single wicked anything wider than the wm mason. Like others have said, certain factors such as heavy FOs might come into play.

Kay, I love the set up- very neat and organized, well-spaced. The pumpkins are cute, too. Violet

They aren't very tall- I only got a 10 lb bag of the wax so I poured half, so it's like 3" tall (the mold is 6" tall but I only filled it halfway). And yes, I'm trimming to 1/8 an inch. Each burn has been 3-4 hours. IDK? I might try the CD12s? Thanks guys...

Hi Guys, I've been at this for a few weeks now, trying to wick my 3 inch palm pillars to leave the walls standing. I tried a CD16 which was too hot- the walls were too thin and began to crumble by the 4th burn. Then wicked down to a CD14, it was burning okay until Friday- the walls started to crumble at the top, even though closer to the base it was still very thick. I began turning it every 15 min or so once Stella suggested that. Should I wick down to a CD12? To me, that seems too small. I have samples of HTP wicks as well as premiers. I'd like to get this down so I can start offering them for sale but first want to ensure that the tests come out with a decent wall left over. Thanks a bunch! Violet

Psst... I found out that making candles into the early Am hours has its own hazards... It's like trying to mix a cake mix and bake it when you, really, are half baked yourself... and tired too boot. Have fun and don't forget never ever to cool your containers in an oven? (Altho I might try it someday and I hope never to have wax all over it.. my heat gun will come in handy then, tho... hahahaha... ) Good luck!

Hey at least you are a guy who is crafty enough to make candles! My soon to be ex husband could do any job when it came to so-called 'manly crafts', but when it came to simple handiness, in the house, he was always clueless. Since then I've enlisted the help of my 2 ex bf's and my sons. They are or were??? (exes suck) great... Actually, the greatest credit goes to my 15 yr old son, who helped me prep for my craft fair. Still haven't sold all of that stock, but when I do, his allowance will greatly increase!

Hey Mike- Never, never, never put your jars in the oven to cool.. Hey you asked me to remind you...

I grew up in Hawaii and the fruit of the fig trees we harvested would end up brown after we let them dry, but when unripe, they were a golden color. I think it would be good to think of a golden brown when coloring this scent... just my two cents. Oh and lychees (yum by the way, I wish I could EAT one) are white/nearly opaque on the inside with a thin red shell. I would love to have a lychee scent, but that would most assuredly lead to my being homesick... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lychee Vi

Thanks Crazy Mom! I have decided not to let others dictate anything... But that being said, I did tell her I could only do the 5 oz bulb jars, as that was the only jar I could wick successfully with palm, aside from mason jars. Same with kids, too, I agree. I have teenage boys!!!!!!! :rolleyes2

I put my pillar on a rack on top of a glass baking dish, then put a box on the top. I was thinking the same could be done (minus the box) in the oven but haven't tried it yet... the glass catches any seeping wax... then can be melted into tarts or votives. Just a thought. OOps didn't see that it was a container.. How'd you manage to spill the wax? WHen I pour votives that need to be cooled in the oven, I use a cookie sheet underneath them. I pour directly on the rack then gently slide it in.

Holy hell yah I wish I could afford $1800 worth of her stock just to return it at the end of the day! I hope I do great at the fair too... more of a vendor event. I get to set up and sell between their lunch hour, which goes from 11 until 1:30. It's an insurance company so the employees are used to paying (don't I know, I worked for one once!!! lol... ) and they love candles in Upstate NY. Plus I'm sure my ex-coworker has played me up (she works for a dif. ins. comp. than I did, so that's why this is working out for me...). I did take the day off of work and have to pay a $25 vendor fee, but hey, it's recognition, right? And if I don't have to deal with retailers, fine by me at this point! I'd rather deal retail myself and if I had the money, I'd set up my own shop. And my sister lives in Hawaii- I just talked to her and said if I have a lot of excess stock, I'll mail some to her in flat rate boxes and she can take it to the marketplace. I'll pay her to set up and sell... booth fees table etc... and give her a cut. And because it's Hawaii, I expect most people will accept a higher price because most things are shipped in (I was born and raised there). And... an old friend of mine with whom I've kept in touch works at a company in CA and has offered to use my products for her yearly Xmas event in December... I only have to ship product to her, as well. So it will work out, I hope, one way or another... Either way, though, I will have a whole lot of palm wax unused! But I love it so I am not unhappy about ordering. Thanks! Violet

OMG! That sounds like a nightmare with the banks involved and everything. I'm going to write up a policy on my website for retailers. To think they think they can dick people around like that... we work hard at what we do and what do they do? Sit there in a shop and collect the $... and this woman has claimed my tealights were made by her shop. Yah... I doubt she has the knowledge. I still haven't heard from her after my last emails and I doubt I will. No doubt she decided to order from the cheaper supplier who probably doesn't make pure essential oil candles. How else could they be that cheap with what she wanted to order? I wish I had the money- I'd start experimenting in the oils myself and find GOOD suppliers to use for EO. I really don't think the market swings that way,for the most part. I think a lot of people are following a trend, and right now it's soy and other natural waxes... Next year, who knows? I've never heard of palm wax before this summer... The nerve these people have just makes me livid! If she had not beaten around the bush so much, I could do small claims court... but really, is it worth my time? Probably not... All I have is a slew of emails with her not making up her mind one way or another and me promising to do this or that according to her standards/specs/etc... wanting this then telling me that... blah... I'm over it... Hopefully next Friday I'll sell out on my candles (stock) at the craft event I'm doing at the Phoenix ins co.. and then I can just kiss the thought of doing business with this particular retail shop goodbye as a learning lesson. I will never deal with uncertainty and waffling again!

LOL... Yes I think people want to see sex in everything... lol.

Yah, you're right- I should. I just really hoped to have a local retailer order, but not such a wishy-washy one. If I do hear from her, which I probably will, I am going to tell her just that... to stop beating around the bush, tell me what she wants, get the oils to me so I can at least get them to her in 4-5 weeks, pay me so I can recoup my costs before I START testing.... or to go with her other 'cheaper' supplier... Makes me wonder... maybe she had an out with her other supplier? If she does this with everyone, I can see how she'd have to change frequently! I don't even know why she's getting me so heated (well, aside from time and money wasted and the headache)... I have many people who buy retail from me who don't give me this many headaches! I should start my own line of 'essential' candles... haha. Grr... Thanks guys for all the support.

She has a business about 15 minutes away and I contacted her via phone last Spring to see if she'd be interested in carrying my products, on the advice of another retailer. Since then she's gone back and forth with me via email and phone about candles. She's always started out wanting a much larger order, then waffling about this or that and cutting it to the point where she only ended up ordering tealights (unscented ones) instead of the votives, jars, etc, she said she wanted... I didn't know that I should be requiring a minimum at the time, so I let it go but was starting to get pretty frustrated after the second time when she again only ordered tealights with a promise to order jars, votives, tarts in clamshells, etc... once she figured out what she wanted... At the time I had a lot of jars in stock and was prepping them for a craft fair (after realizing after the 2nd order that she probably wouldn't be ordering and instead of hanging onto the stock, I was going to try to recoup my money somehow). When she picked up the tealights, I showed her the jars I had and also told her about the palm wax that I'd been working with. She said she'd be in touch as she really liked the palm wax. This was back in September. I didn't hear from her for over a month, figured she'd disappeared into the mists again, then she emailed me for a quote on 100 tealights, 50 votives, clamshell tarts, and wanted to know my minimum. I did research, found a site to get the jars for her.... ordered the palm wax, votive wax, wicks... she only had to pick the # of scents she wanted and let me know. I was supposed to have weeks of time to experiment with each scent, as they were scents she was special ordering for use in candles specially made for her shop. This week she emailed me and complained about the amount of oil I suggested she buy (she still hasn't given me a number for the jars she wants, so I high-balled the estimate about how much oils I would need, plus I have to test each scent first)... She said she would be barely breaking even if she bought that much oil and was I sure I needed that much... I emailed her back explaining about the need to test each scent with each different candle to ensure they will work in the wax. I have yet to even SMELL these oils and do not know where they are coming from, by the way... In her email, she said that she liked the idea of buying locally, but would go back to her old supplier if necessary... In my email to her I told her that if she gave me a number for the jars, I'd better be able to tell her the amount of oil... I know that the max oil that soy can hold is 1.5 oz, and palm holds 1, per pound of wax, so I did my calculations based on that and the need to test, but I told her without knowing how many jars or how many scents (she's undecided between 4 and 5), I can't tell her if 16 oz of each scent would be too much. In retrospect, I wish I'd told her that I would not work with her on any sort of estimate until I was allowed to test the oils! Really, I've never been so frustrated in my life. I've got hundreds of tealight cups that I bought months back because I anticipated her ordering a ton of them... hundreds of wicks, tons of votive wax,, soy wax, 55 lbs of palm container wax (that I don't regret buying because I love it, but still...) and she can't even make up her mind. I am an even smaller business than her and while I understand having to watch the bottom line, she's been wasting months of my time. I've been testing the jar with the wax she wanted so I'd be prepared for her order, to a degree, with an idea of how to wick it. The thing that was really frustrating is that she kept going back and forth... First it was tealights, votives, tarts, jars, then well, maybe she'd hold off on the jars for now and just get the tealights and tarts... and wanted to know what my minimum order would be for just tealights/tarts. I told her 100 tealights and 12 clamshells (figuring that put me around the $100 minimum ballpark and would cover the cost of ordering the tealights). I told her I'd order the wicks right away and let her know when they were in and to let me know ASAP when she got the oils so I could start production. Then she seemed to have forgotten about the tarts in another email... Then I emailed her two weeks ago to let her know that I'd gotten the palm wax in and she got all excited and said she wanted the jars and may as well get the votives too, while she's at it. I asked her if she wanted the clamshell tarts, too? And she said she'd forgotten about the tarts and yes, still wanted them... Then this email this week saying she may not order at all, after all the back and forth for months (since July!). This lady went from wanting to order around $300 or more in candles to $30 in July, then again this has happened. I'm really tired of the back and forth. And really, I don't have much faith in essential oils... Most are cut chemically or they'd cost a heck of a lot more than what she says is 'too much' for her to pay. How am I to know the integrity of the oils, especially when I don't know who her supplier is and haven't even so much as sniffed them? She is big on all natural products... how natural are they, really? Don't farmers use pesticides on these plants? They are processed... things are added. It seems so naive. There really isn't enough time, at this point, to even test all the scents and different candles to meet her deadline of Thanksgiving, let alone pump out all of the candles she 'might order.' I really need the money (I'm not even breaking even this year as it is!), but really, is all of this back and forth and frustration worth it? All she's given me is headaches and $45 for the tealights she ordered from me over the past 7 months... I even told her how frustrated this was making me, back in Sept., because she could not make up her mind and I felt like I was being put on hold... I told her that I decided not to pursue fundraising opportunities so I could focus on her order (which I did until last week, when I once again didn't hear from her and thought she'd probably decided to let the order fall through)... but now, I'm pretty sure it's too late for fundraisers... I'm about ready to throw in the towel, go to the shop that is about 5 min from me and ask her if she is interested... I've surely learned my lesson now! There is a huge craft fair the 2nd of December that I have inquired about, but received no response. This fair is so huge, though, you probably have to book 6 mo in advance. I'm still looking... Enough venting.. gotta get to work...

That's amusing! When I was taking French I used to go to babblefish and try to translate stuff that I was typing to my French friends. I musta sounded so funny! I would be ticked too if anyone stole my stuff and used it on their site! And, I would report it to get the pictures and tutorials removed.

LOL special line... indeed, she's been dickering me around about that, too... I won't say her shop's name, but she asked me last week if it was ok to say on her labels "'made exclusively for......insert shop name here' by Violet's Exotic Candles of Kinderhook, NY". I thought it sounded neat and didn't mind, being that the scent-line was her idea, but now? I'm simply irked... I just emailed her a long email and told her that if she wants to order, she has to order $100 minimum and pay 50% upfront, plus sign a contract. Probably too late... she's already played too much with me, doesn't want to follow thru and thinks her old supplier was much cheaper... I wonder if her old supplier really used soy and the EO's she thought they did in order to provide her with the candles she thought were natural? EO prices are quite high... Ah screw it, enough lack of sleep and aggravation! Thanks guys for supporting me.