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jonsie

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  • Makes
    candles
  • Location
    An American in Perth
  • Occupation
    Stay at Home Mom
  • About You
    In a former life I was a Mechanical Engineer but now I'm a mommy and loving it. With my daughter starting school now I'm looking into candles as a hobby.

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  1. Not urgent at all! Just thought I'd ask and see if my printer could handle it. But on second thought, I'm remembering that here in Australia, most paper is sold by grams/meter^2, as opposed to the U.S. convention of #s. I'm not sure of an easy conversion either.
  2. Redraider, how horrible!!! That's like a horror movie to me. I recently had a few moths in my pantry and I was completely grossed out by that. Seeing your picture makes me want to hurl. Hope you didn't lose anything else besides the printer. BTA, how heavy is the card stock you are using?
  3. You might have seen another thread I started on the topic from awhile back. I had a black & white Brother laser and it was a nice little work horse. The only problem was that when I wanted to print small black text on clear labels it simply didn't have the clarity so I needed something different. The local printer sellers here in Perth would not let me run any test pages, so I took a leap of faith and bought a Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C205 w color laser. I don't believe the Fuji Xerox is even available in the U.S. so I don't want to oversell it. So FWIW, I have been very pleased with how crisp it prints black on clear labels, but when it comes to color, the colors don't seem all that strong. Maybe that is how all color lasers are on clear labels?
  4. Soy oil is generally extracted using hexane. Anyone selling you 'organic' soy oil should be prepared to explain how they squeezed the oil out of the beans in bulk without using hexane. Then, as robertgibbens explained, there is the hydrogenation process to make it into a wax. Bottom line, mass-produced soy wax is neither organic nor all that natural, and creates quite a foot-print on the environment. If you are hell-bent on making a crayon with organic materials, you can try organic beeswax (not impossible to find but expensive). Compare the cost of the beeswax to organic Melt & Pour soap. If the M&P is cheaper, then mix Organic M&P and Organic beeswax at 50/50 to get a nice, hard crayon that cleans up easily and isn't overly expensive.
  5. In some occasions, I have had water in my wax from the double boiler, but it will fall to the bottom of the pour pot. I use glass pour pots so it is easier to see the water than with metal pour pots. You can also tell if water ended up in your container candle because the frosting pattern will have uncommonly straight lines. And for laughs, try pouring at 100-104F (right before the wax gets cloudy). It might solve a few problems for you, depending on the FO.
  6. Soooo gorgeous! You deserve to be proud of that!!!
  7. I won't say that breast milk soap is gross. I mean, we've adapted to cows milk and goats milk as a drink and for all kinds of purposes. But what bothers me about breast milk soap is that breast milk, with all its health benefits, is in limited quantity and women are choosing to saponify it instead of donating it to a baby that can benefit from it. Unless it can be proven that breast milk soap cures things like skin cancer, then I believe it is a terrible waste of breast milk.
  8. I would love to have a pot for each fragrance because I hate the wiping down part, but I don't have the room for all the pots. It looks like Sharon's are nestable (if that's a word) so that would definitely save space. As for my preference, I've been using old glass coffee decanters that I picked up from 2nd hand stores and usually only cost about $1. The glass seems to retain the heat longer than the aluminum pour pots, but I can't nest them.
  9. Just wondering if anyone else has the same experience as me. When testing a candle and it produces a deep melt pool, I'll blow out the candle and pull the wick and replace it with a different wick. I'll let the candle cool off for about four hours then relight with the new wick. However, it seems that the burn after a deep melt pool is usually small with a low flame. It reminds me of the small flames I get if I don't let my candles cure long enough after the original pour. Should I let the candle re-cure for a couple of days before testing again? Seems the deep melt pool would have nearly the same properties as a freshly poured candle, albiet with slightly less FO and more wick trash in it. Am I over-thinking this? Or should we wait to test a new wick size after a deep melt pool?
  10. I agree with Judy that is has something to do with the trimming. I only have about two years experience with candles, but I have noticed that there is the type of mushroom that will go away, and there is the type of mushroom that continues to hang on, and maybe even grow. From my experience, the type of mushroom that eventually goes away usually disappears within about nine hours of burning (3" diameter container). My theory is that at first, a cut wick will fray and blossom in the flame and make a significant mushroom early on. As it burns, it slowly incinerates those frayed ends until it smooths itself out. Eventually it should trim itself without help. I've seen a variety of mushroom shapes all disappear after this amount of time. The mushroom caused by FO will hang on and just get uglier by the hour. It might trim itself in a small way, but if you blow out the candle and there's a glowing ember on the wick that smokes for several moments, then probably time to make some kind of adjustment.
  11. Thanks for the responses After about 26 hours I got impatient and gave the soap a slight push on one end of the mold and was happy to see it sliding easily out. It still seemed too soft to stand the whole log on one end so I layed it on its side and cut with a crinkle cutter. It appears to have not gelled (yay!) and the color is a lovely creamy light yellow which is nice and even on all bars. They are drying now and hardening up nicely. Still gives a bit when pushed but doing much better than the batch I made last week. I can't wait to use them! Steve, you were right about the honey. Using the same amounts of honey, goats milk and water but no lye, I mixed them together and the honey barely changed the color of the milk. So the reaction took place even though my digital thermometer did not pick up a change in temperature.
  12. Congrats! Sounds like it went really well! Odd that you can't smell it, but maybe someone else can test for you?
  13. I've made a few batches of Goats Milk, Oatmeal and Honey CP soap, and I'm learning new things with each batch. I took a break from soaping for about six months, then last week made a 5# batch with too much castor oil, lots of shea butter, and burnt goats milk... ugh... I am clearly out of practice So after doing lots more reading I attempted another GMOH batch yesterday and kept my recipe simple: Water: 38% Superfat: 7% Olive Oil: 35% Coconut Oil: 30% Palm Oil: 30% Castor Oil: 5% Honey at 1 Tbs ppo Fine Oatmeal at 2 Tbs ppo In an attempt to keep the CP from gelling, I tried the method where the honey is diluted in some reserved water and added to the GM/lye mix (instead of adding the honey at trace). So I subtracted the water amount from GM (I set aside about 10%) and used frozen GM. The lye and GM did very well together and I kept the temp below 70 F, resulting in a lovely ivory color. When the GM/lye dropped down to 60 F, I added my honey/water mix slowly and although the temperature never got above 70 F, it turned light orange. Not sure if that was due to the color of the honey or the GM burning. My oils had gotten hotter than I wanted so I had to wait for them to cool down. This is when I debated about what temps to mix it with the GM/lye since the lye was around 70 F. Once my oils reached about 105 F, I poured my GM/lye through a sieve into the oils. Is this too great of a temperature difference? A small amount of stuff was caught by the sieve... kind of translucent but I don't know if it was lye crystals or gummy fats, but no big clumps. Could that mean that not enough lye was carried over into the oils? It took a long time for the mix to reach trace, even with a stick blender. The temperature of the mix hovered at about 86 F and the oils did not want to blend! I'm used to trace happening quickly with a stick blender so the 10+ minutes for this to trace seemed like an eternity, lol. All the oils seemed to eventually blend together, but I didn't stop to see if it would separate. Should I wait to check for separation? I was worried about waiting too long. I added my oatmeal and stirred and stirred, and it seemed to be getting to about a medium trace. I poured into a Pringles can (uninsulated) and popped it into the refrigerator for about six hours. If I want to avoid gelling, should I leave it in there longer, or was that too long? Does putting it in the refrigerator slow down the curing time? After a few hours on the counter the Pringles can was still cool to the touch. A temperature on the inside showed about 73 F. After leaving the Pringles can on the counter all night I could feel that the can had warmed up. Temperature was about 82 F on the inside in a 65 F room. What temperature do I need to stay below to avoid gelling? Almost 24 hours later the soap is soft to the touch and seems to have sweated a slight amount of oil. Should I have lowered my Superfat %? Did I cure at too cool of a temperature? And, when can I expect to demold? At the moment it looks no where near ready compared to other batches I've done in the past. Sorry for all the questions, but I love doing this stuff and I want to get better Thanks in advance!
  14. Back to your original question, BTA, I feel extremely uncomfortable leaving an oversized wick for a customer. True, some candles might puff up and would benefit from a longer wick, but that would be the exception, not the rule. I am also concerned that some customers might take that extra-long length as how long a wick should be trimmed from there on out. I say, keep it simple and safe; no need to assume your candle is gonna crap out before it's even burned. I never knew such a creature existed! Well done! I married a Vol, and until then I was completely clueless about the rivalries. Anyway, we visit Knoxville every year and it has become a second home to me.
  15. I use something very similar. Long neck with a trigger, has a safety lock on it and is refillable. It also has an adjustable flame. Here in Australia they cost about $5 at Bunnings and I have not needed to use anything else. They are especially useful for lighting wooden wicks deep in the container.
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