Desertrose

Lovely vibrant colours, great photo's and presentation!

Freecycle is always a good place to look out for unwanted furniture - tables, shelves, cupboards etc. Can't give you any tips on organisation though because our 'workshop" (the garage) always looks like a bomb has hit it despite my attempts to try and organise things.

I really like the look of the tall grass pillars. I think they look really classy.

I really like all the textures of the third ones. They're my favourites. Very rustic looking. You've done a good job with them all!

These are lovely! Beautiful colours.

Thanks for looking and commenting all... Yeah, I'm not a lacy person myself so I'm tending towards the hessian one. You can't see it in the photo but the lace IS tea stained.....still...it's a bit too "pretty" for my tastes and I don't think it would look right on our market stall. I also did one with part of a bamboo table mat glued around it... I liked the look of that too except you could see too much of the twisty rim of the jar. Anyway, I'll make up a few and see if there's any interest otherwise I might have to take up jam making, lol! Tammy, I confess too that I like a candle jar to LOOK like a candle jar. Oh well, you live and learn!

Been trying different things. I think I like this one the best. Hessian (burlap?) glued around with string and beads.

Thanks. I'm thinking if I did three different sizes - which we have, they might look better grouped together. I'm pretty sure someone here mentioned that people were thinking their jam was candles, lol! Ya can't win!

Hi, I'm trying to think of ideas for us to get rid of glass jars that just aren't selling as actual candles - namely these jam jars. I have a lot of scrap tea stained lace lying around doing nothing so I thought I'd try gluing some on the jar and using it as a tea light container. Looks prettier than in the pic (couldn't get it focused properly) and so far all the heat is rising up through the top rather than making the walls of the jar too hot so I don't think there will be an issue as far as the lace goes. Looks pretty unexciting though with the tea light un lit. I dunno! I might still tie a thin piece of satin ribbon round the top... The only other option is to stick 'em all on ebay for the jam makers. People just didn't "get" the whole plain prim look here and kept mistaking the jar candles for actual jam. Any other ideas ?

Thanks Stella. There's no getting around it is there....votives are just the bane of my life, lol!

They are very pretty indeed! I like how you have layered some of the chunks and your little dinglies just make them!

Stella, how do you get the tops of your votives...the edges of the tops, to be so neat and "rounded" looking? I always find that as the wax sets in the mold there is a little lip created that kind of sucks up the edge of the mold leaving a rim that is very fine and sharp and prone to chipping. In the past I've "carved" that fine sharp edge away with a knife (waaay too time consuming) and recently I've tried heat gunning them to make it melt so the edge is less fine. Now we are shrink wrapping them so it's not as much of an issue, but it bugs me none the less.

Thanks everyone! Appreciate you having a look and commenting. I'm having fun with the layered ones.....I think I'll add those to our line. Can only do them in small pillars though as I can't quite master the art of pouring into large molds without some of the wax splashing on the sides.

Hi Cheryl. Your candles look great! Nice layering. The tarts look so smooth and creamy! The way they are all photographed too is very good! I have to say, and this may be simply personal taste, but I think the black ribbon looks a bit "heavy" on your products. I know it's darn hard - the whole ribbon thing. At one point for one particular shop I was trying to decorate jars with ribbon and found that the pale colours just looked washed out and practially invisible, so I tried a dark chocolate brown and then that looked too heavy. Luckily we convinced the shop owner to just go with the gingham (like we do all the rest of our jars!) Not that that would work with your product since you're not aiming for a "country" look. So I don't have any alternative suggestions really.........raffia gets messy quick.... Maybe a simple thick kind of jute string to tie in with your "natural" look? On second thought, no.....That wouldn't go with the gold lids and I realise you're after a more classy look. I do like the black organza bags though.... I did tarts in a deep burgandy bag at one point and I liked how they look through the dark material. Anyway...could just be me and my tastes though. I think for the size of some of your jars perhaps some of the hang tags could be slightly smaller too? See what everyone else says though

Thank you! I don't think you can go wrong with red candles. Seems to be a colour a lot of people are attracted to. I don't know what the current trend of decorating is over there at the moment but here the whole Bali thing seems to be popular here in Australia, so reds, earthy neutrals and greens seem to be the "in" colours.

Fragrances....I think we have around 60 in the cupboard at home here but at any given time we do not OFFER all 60. (We're in the middle of a fragrance cull right now.) For our wholesale customers we offer around 30 different scents. Products... we do jar candles in several different containers, palm and soy. Palm pillars, palm tart melts (mini and normal size), votives - a limited selection, two different types of bakery melts. We used to do tea lights but we've scrapped those now co's neither of us can stand to pour them. At our market stand we also sell hand made candle mats, and a selection of rusty tin ware/candle accessories. I find that for an "interesting" looking market stand it's good to have plenty of variation. That's what I'm attracted to personally anyway. I've never seen (or at least not been aware of) anyone not buy anything because they can't decide. On the contrary we've had customers who have ended up buying several items because they can't choose. We've got the whole country look going on though which is condusive to the whole "cluttered" look, so I guess it works for our stall. However, for our wholesalers they just want jar candles and melts predominantly. Two different kettles of fish really.

Everything Candybee said! Plus, trying to curb hubby's jar fetish. We really do not need so many variations of jar candles!

Thank you. I'm into the purple groove now. Thanks too Nancy. I don't like dragons blood incense. My favourite is white sage but I've yet to find a white sage candle fragrance, though I'm sure one MUST exist somewhere.

Thanks Jojo. I bought the dragons blood for my sister - to make her some candles at Christmas because she likes that scent. I wasn't sure of it at first but having worked with it more it's growing on me now.

Thanks Dave! Red is a predominant colour accent in my house, so I'm going to find it hard to part with these ones!

We could not get any red colour from both our major candle suppliers here for WEEKS! I finally got my red fix satisfied through making these candles. The tall ones are the usual "hippy" style but I experimented with the small pillars and poured many very small layers all tilted on the same angle. Interesting effect I think! Took a long time though! The scent I've used is Dragons blood.

For craft shows or markets couldn't you could use a trolley to stack and move the boxes on? We've bought one now simply to make life a little easier on ourselves.

Yes, I've done that in the past when just using a hammer and nail to punch out a design. It works, but you'd have to be quick in summer here co's that ice is going to start melting pretty quickly.

I'm glad I came back to this thread. Thanks for posting the link to that site! Looks like those are the tools that might just do the trick. Tracy

I find that really bizarre.....that a candle retailer would not be allowed to burn candles in their shop? Where has common sense gone?