TallTayl

Welcome back to the craft 🥰 Your instincts are spot on. Palm or lard will provide the texture you’re after. You can try adding stearic acid, which can become tricky to keep from developing stearic spots and accelerating.

3 inch wide really does seem like a magical measurement. Especially if it’s at least 3 inches tall. Better to be 4 inches tall. It’s kind of the golden ratio for pretty much every candle I’ve ever made.

We’re a friendly bunch of makers who were all at the same point when we started. If there was a mistake to be made, we have most certainly made it, and probably more than once! 😂 Members here are bound by a love of scented crafts. We want to see you do well 🥰 Ask away and let’s see how far we can go.

W warm welcome to you! May all of your business dreams come true.

I am seeing a resin trend developing. I’m open to co-ops of special order kegs of winners from places like WSP too. I’m planning to special order Oakmoss & Myrrh and possibly Black Raspberry Vanilla on the next sale. 25 lbs bulk only offers 5% discounts, but the final cost per lb is usually about half of retail, so it’s worth it to me. Oakmoss & Myrrh is all myrrh to my senses. It blends with EVERYTHING I have paired it with. I need to get with the program and complete candle wax testing before I get too far ahead of myself, though. it is super in soap, the oil warmer and in the Lampe Berger so far. BRV is the best I’ve found retail for CP soap. It’s good in melts too, but I struggle with HT on anything BlackBerry. I need to force myself to be patient with our labs to see if they have something comparable or better for just candles. incidentally, we have access to loads of unique flavors too. I resisted the urge to ask about the min order on them so I didn’t disappoint myself too much. I crave an apple cider lip balm flavor from their list 😍

Yay! I really hope this lab comes through with candle scents that are at least as good as what I have become used to with soap.

I’m so happy to read your story. A rising tide raises all boats. We could all use a hand to remain afloat. it will be exciting to see what we end up with for a mix of fragrances. 🎉🥳. Our only limit is us.

I looked hard at the Ikon Art kit and just didn’t want to spend the extra $100 for basically fonts and a few stencil ideas on a partner site. I use Canva and Silhouette design studios, so it was redundant. I did buy 5 sheets of the fabric and 5 sheets of the hard surface films to try out against the old fashioned emulsion. They shipped within the hour! I’ll give a side by side with the traditional screen print and the ikonart in case anyone is considering playing along. The uv lights from Amazon should do the trick to develop the image on the emulsions for both types. getting excited now!

The rep is sending some commonly available dupes along with a few original blends for us to sample. I personally am no interested in BBW and similar dupes, but if there is interest we can certainly explore them. My opinion, and it’s only my opinion, is that I like unique fragrances that my customers can’t get elsewhere. It will take some time for the rep and us to learn one another so we can dial in things just for us. my personal interest right now is geared toward summer. I’m in the farmers market type of groove right now. fruit preserves, herbal blends, floral, and of course resins and incense. BTW, I brought in a few of my dupes recently and have extras to share. Pink Sugar, Provence, Vetyver, Dragons Blood and Tonic each have several lbs available.

I tried quitting once. It was the longest weekend of my life. 😂

Your kindness is giving me the strength to go for it! You probably figured out I am pretty stubborn when on a quest. I’ll send you something from the first attempts - good bad or otherwise. If you’re brave, send your ship to info in a pm and hope I’m a quick study. 😜

Glad you have the time and desire to continue. We are all in this together. I think we can circle our wagons and make great things in this group.

Hi there! I’ve not smelled any “official” Disney scents to offer suggestions. Who is the named manufacturer of the candles you like? Seems like there would be more than one. while I generally will not want to tangle with the Disney machine, I’m a sleuth that likes to track down things for the sake of knowledge.

I see it as we have nothing to lose by testing their sample sets. At least this lab i understands our candle goals and isn’t trying to shoehorn a soap fragrance into a candle. We will be able to order in “our” preferred concentrations and will have fixed codes owned by the forum. our rep understands the chemistry differences between soy, paraffin, beeswax, coconut, etc.. she also understands how we need CT to sell, and our candles need to SMELL and burn cleanly. How refreshing! We should expect two separate sample sets some time this week. She plans to send a collection of some unique blends they made for Earth Day, and some I asked for in the citrus, fruit and resin category. I’ve been yearning for some awesome Myrrh and a strawberry that throws and does not smell like smoothie, milk shake or wet cardboard. For the soapers (myself included) we will also get a couple intended for soap, that may work ok in candles too. We shall see. Once they’re here I can send sniffies out if they smell ok. min order is the usual 25 lbs, so we’ll start with something that appeals to our group and move onward and upward from there. Wouldn’t it be grand if we on the forum were our own private candle fragrance club? We need a new forum name that lives up to our awesomeness.

Ahahahah I tried this exact process with my vinyl cutter. It was a DISASTER from the word go. Weeding the vinyl with small letters is painful. And it doesn’t stick to the screen nearly as well as it did for this kind Crafter. A few passes of the ink and iI had the little dots of letters lifting off the screen and ink bleeding round the stencil on the second print. I tried heat pressing HTV too. The ink bleed was the same, which makes sense as it’s a sharp edge which catches ink.

I watched this guys channel for weeks last summer. Makes it look easy. my daughter is in a graphics class with a teacher who prints. I’ve been hoping she needs a conference so I have a reason to visit him at the school 😂.

@Brotato so many things to reply to…. Starting with: thank you for those videos. I spend more than my share on time on YouTube and the algorithm had not found those for me yet. Each vid I watch carves new idea pathways 🥳 I just need to get over my fear of messing up something new paralysis and just stinking start. You gotta break eggs to make omelettes. I got most of my real printing supplies from Screen Print Direct. Just looked and see they have exponentially more emulsions since my last purchase. Right now, I have several size bags for bayberry candles, the same number for beeswax. This project is about mastering something new. It’s been on my bucket list for so long it’s about time to cross it off. If all goes well, I have many other ideas for the process, not just other product. We cut down loads of mature, but storm damaged trees that want to be something pretty, like live edge cutting boards, etc. then screen printing with Torch Paste to make thoughtful housewarming gifts and photo props. glass etching has always looked super fun, too. Stencils to keep projects from looking like a kindergartener made something is always good! My family has a warped sense of humor. The best gift last Christmas was a set of tea towels someone else printed with sayings from TV series we all loved. “Fold in the cheese” and “What does burning smell like” brought people to tears laughing. I CAN MAKE THOSE at will once I get over myself. I think I might pull the trigger on IKON Art just to dip a toe into what is possible while i slather emulsion on the screen and see how it goes. If I mess up, then that what emulsion remover is for. your suggestions about printing multiple images for the bag sizes makes so much sense! One screen, many uses. A multitasker. Love it. I have the butterfly clips to set the screen. This lady from IkonArt used command strips to hold her clips to print a stack of paper napkins. If she can do that, I think I can figure out how to print a few bags. I’ll pick up a proper tool to hold the frames (or build several failures first 😂). Braying: I tried all of my different inks, fabric inks, screen print inks, paints, fabric mediums, you name it, and was not happy with any results. The stamp got bogged up up quickly while still not managing to print a full enough impression. The images were not saturated with color and were not something I felt proud to give.

I thought about that. This is more of a skill mastery project. I have 4-5 standard size bags that I use, so 4-5 different screens. If I figure it out, my dream is to expand that to soap bags-possibly custom printed for events, etc. but I’m getting ahead of myself. there are so many other things I’d like to screen. Have you seen the fire paste for wood? You can burn/etch wood slabs. An glass etching? Possibilities are endless!

Hello and a big warm welcome to you, Amber. We’re a friendly bunch of people with a wide range of skills and experience to help light the way.

I’ll get a pic or list of all the different inks and tools I’ve collected so far shortly. I bought the emulsion spreading tool sized to fit inside the speedball frame separately. the speedball frame has channel like a screen door with the splining to secure the screen. Made me think I could swap in/out screens “easily”. The Ikon Art system uses them in several instructionals. Now I get why pros use aluminum screens per image. question about exposing the screen: how strong of a UV lamp do you recommend? I’ve seen vids of exposing in strong sunlight and on stand UV lamps of different sizes and intensities. Some lamps are as low as 20w, while many seasoned artists won’t go less than 50 or 100. I almost bought an Ikon Art starter set but the nearly $200 price tag at the time clicked the “DIY like the pros” button in my head. Their system looks neat and simple, but limited to their screen mesh choice. you’re giving me some confidence to give it a go! Thank you so much!!!!

You knit? I bow to you. do you spin too? I would think bar soap would be rather hard on the wool fibers. Maybe it is so diluted that isn’t an issue for that bottle? You can make a small batch of your bar soap using those oils and see if you come close. Bar soap diluted for laundry can get a weird slimy/snotty consistency. You might be able to dilute enough that it will have a better feel. the ingredient list, if all ingredients are listed in correct order, show it has quite a bit of lanolin in it. The lanolin is higher in the list than lye, so that gives you a starting point for your formula. Coconut oil is very cleansing, as i palm kernel. From a fatty acid profile, both coconut and palm kernel are interchangeable. You could use one, the other or both and achieve a similar end product. if that is a liquid, then the water in the list is for the bar soap, not a liquid. The other oils are minimal likely 3-5% or less. Probably label appeal moreso than functional. You can easily make small batches of single oils, then grate them into water at different proportions to test them in different combinations. I can picture you as a mad scientist 👩‍🔬 We use different cleansers for prepping our raw fleeces for spinning. bar soap can sometimes clean too well, leaving the fibers in rough shape or sticky. Plain old coconut oil bar soap cleans up some filthy tips! Orvus paste is often used on natural fibers. It’s a shampoo for live stock that is primarily sodium laurel sulfate. Not sure why people think it is “gentle”, but quilters seem to love it too. it’s not too much different than Dawn blue original in cleansing abilities. Used very sparingly I bet either can gently cleanse a garment. We all use oo much detergent, don’t we?

my hero! Thank you so much for your kind offer. I’d like to screen print my muslin candle bags. Stamping them is hit or miss - with hundreds of ugly misses stacking up. I’m having a difficult time selecting the ink and proper mesh for the ink. started with the vinyl cutter but realized fast how tragically terrible it is to print with the rough edge bleeding ink everywhere. bought a yard of every mesh available and realized the videos of stapling to a frame tight enough to work isn’t as easy as people make it look. bought a speedball refillable frame and am stuck just getting the courage to load the emulsion onto the screen. I figured if I can’t staple well, how could I possibly o the real stuff 😬. The art on these is nothing fancy, just logo and a few words. Ink colors Dark green ink for bayberry candles. Red for beeswax candles. I bought loads of different ink from speedball to plastisol and others in between. Even thought I would be clever and stamp those inks. You know what disasters I made with those experiments, don’t you? I use several sizes of muslin bag. Once I get some skill developed, ideally a sized screen for each bag size would be the plan.

Ouch. That hurts. Sorry for their customers left scrambling through the closure.

Less vague suggestion: for container candles, I found with nearly all waxes that a container taller than wide works best. Short wide containers are the most difficult to wick. 3” wide x 3-4” tall jars are a sweet spot for the majority of waxes I have worked with. jars narrower than 2.5” or wider than 3.5” are the most frustrating to wick. resist the urge to wick for fast full melt pool. There’s a lot of questionable advice out there about wicking. Safety first!

Welcome to CraftServer! what a fun project. As for what wax, etc, this is such a tough decision. Equal numbers of people prefer soy to paraffin to beeswax to coconut. Nobody will agree. 😊 Every wax has its own strengths and struggles. Learning curves are about the same. if you have a supplier reasonably close by you will save on freight costs. When I started out I picked too many waxes and got confused and frustrated. once I slowed down, settled on one wax that I could get at more than one supplier, and learned it inside out in one container I saw real progress. your wick choice will depend on your wax choice. fragrance retailers are a dime a dozen. You’ll likely try out many before you find the perfect scents for your goals. As with wax, nobody agrees about who the “best” fragrance suppliers are. All have duds and winners. hit up the suppliers by state list to see who is near you 😊. That will give you a start.