EricofAZ

Clary Sage is the main ingredient of one of the swills I made and I agree, it has an affect. I wouldn't describe it as a high, but certainly I did notice that it altered my attitude towards the "who cares, nothing bothers me" side of things. Reminded me of when I took zyban to quit smoking (and it worked). I plan on reducing the ratio of Clary Sage and increasing the Ylang Ylang and Lavender ratios. Neroli is supposed to be good but the price is pretty high. As for burning this in the candle, I suppose that what goes in the wick is pretty much destroyed, but the EO's that evaporate from the pool are clearly beneficial as something inhaled. I have a 3" pool going on one of those wide mouth mason jars. This is probably a $10 candle with a total of 6 ounces of material to burn. Not what you would expect to buy in the store.

Yeah, I'm fine tonight, and added some lemon and orange to the pool. Not sure that was the right thing to do. Seemed a bit stimulating. I do low sodium and exercise, sometimes on a weekend I'll do a century ride on the bike. 100 miles requires electrolytes and nutrition during the ride and I absolutely have to take in salt or the legs cramp like crazy. So its a mixed bag. I did go back on the diuretic this morning. If I have one flaw, it is not enough water during the day. Doc is coming back from vacation and I'll go see him. I'm down to 138/86 tonight after burning the candle for 3 hours. So, about the candle, it really does have a disaster of a top to it when dry, but when the pool forms, I find myself taking in long deep breaths and enjoying the evening. I realize the EO's are for massage or direct application to the skin. They seem to have some value in the air.

Yes, sorry for the confusion. What I think I meant to say is: 1: If it is a dupe, say so. 2: If you buy the real perfume from the original manufacturer (or an authorized manufacturer) you should be able to say so. - Eric

So I'm really fascinated with aromatherapy. (Been into herbal supplements for years and my nick name is "the witch doctor" cuz I like to put together herbals for athletic activities.) (Nothing on the WADA ban list.) Anyway, I have high BP and lately the meds are not doing much of a job. I came home the other day and was 208/110 and that was with my irbesart. Soooo..... Seems that the great internet (Thanks Al Gore!) is filled with aromatherapy suggestions for lowering the BP. Top of the list is Clary Sage (not regular sage), Lavender, Ylang Ylang, Marjoram, Lemon, Orange, Melissa, Rose, Geranium, Hibiscus, rosewood, neroli (yeah, a bazillion dollars a dram) and some debate about Chamomile and Hyssop. Anyone try a candle with this swill in it? I just made one with Clary Sage, Bulgarian Lavender and Ylang Ylang. Used 20ml in 6 oz wax (seems like I might have used too much). Wax was mostly feathering palm and paraffin with a pinch of VB and 5 percent beeswax. It is in a 3" wide mouth cup size (8 water oz, 6 wax oz) mason with a CD-14 wick. Its burning nice. Smell is slightly medicinal but the extra lavender kept it from being too awful. Dunno if it will work. Any formulas out there for lowering BP? I'm pretty sure that the process of making the candle did a lot to lower my BP. The HT is OK, but I think a bit of Rose would make it absolutely delightful.

:whistle: Love Potion Number Nine ~~~ OK, so the IL (internet lady) is just doing what trademark owners need to do which is to protect and police their rights to trademark. If they don't, then they might lose the rights if challenged in court. I've drawn portraits from photos taken by others like stills in movie films and title them "A Study of Savaak, The Wrath of Kahn, Universal Studios" I think if one is duping a fragrance, it has to be clearly marked. But if one actually buys that fragrance and uses it, they should be able to say "Lovespell by VS added, 15 ml" or something similar. Am I wrong?

Hmmm, I'd like to know more about this. Seems to me if a company sells their scent in a bottle knowing that you are going to use it in candles or soaps, etc, then it would be appropriate to identify what scent was used in the candle. Has anyone received any letters from fragrance companies or found any "policy" statements on the websites that address this? For example, I like that "Between the Sheets" that Demeter makes and I see A&E Oils has the same name and similar smell at the dollar store but nothing about Demeter on the label. I thought that "type" was when a fragrance formula maker tried to duplicate a brand name and marketed the product. I see labels like that on some fragrances.

I found this at the dollar store in the A&E Oils brand that does NOT mix well with candles, but I tried it anyway. One ounce by weight did not suspend well in CB135 half pound. However, it did smell very strong and the CT and HT were quite nice. Awesome. To me, it is a peach/vanilla/cinamon smell. I would have never guessed that it was the rum/orange/mango/guave/passion fruit/lemon mix. So I plan on trying to mix this from stuff from Snowdriftfarm.com Ya never know.

Yeah, I thought crock pots were slow (but that probably also means safe). So if the turkey roaster coil has to be covered up, that suggests to me that it might heat up very fast and maybe even glow red if not covered? I would think the same of the deep fryer. The deep fryer has a warmer setting that has 1/3 turn of the dial, which is a lot, then it goes from 175 degrees to 375 over the next 2/3. Granted, 375 is way too high, I wonder what the settings on the turkey roaster are.

I wouldn't mind a thread on "what not to do." So I have to ask, what in the world is the difference between that turkey roaster and a deep fryer? I have a Costco deep fryer that has low heat settings and the specific temperature settings start at 175. Yeah, it goes higher than one should so there is a caution, but it looks to me like it would melt about 30 pounds or so. Anyone ever use one of these? The heating element looks very similar. I wonder if the heating element gets too radical when it is first turned on. Getting to 175 slowly is obviously much safer than having a heating element go supernova for the first 3 minutes lighting the wax on fire. Wouldn't a crock pot do the job as well? Just don't leave it on high (I'm pretty sure that is about 200 degrees. Just curious.

I've been looking into coloring. Every color can be broken down into a computer code of RGB (red/green/blue) or hexidecimal or CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). There are a few other ways of calculating color. The CMYK works best for candle making (and printing images on white paper). The reason is because the max value of each color is 100 (not so with the other schemes). In CMYK, always assume that white is 100 for the formula, though you won't necessarily be adding white since the wax is white. Wax is not really fully white, so that does effect the formula a bit. There are color pickers and color wheels on the internet that you can get which will provide a CMYK value for the color you choose. One color that I saw that looked like pink grapefruit (and you would maybe choose something different) was C-0, M-50, Y-50, K-0 So to build that, I would mix even parts of Magenta and Yellow and add very little to the wax (effectively increasing the white component) or a lot (effectively darkening the color as in more saturation but not changing the hue). The key is to stay with the formula and just add more of it to make it richer (more saturated). Don't add black to darken (K) because that changes the formula which changes the color.

I can't say for certain how it will work, but when I sniffed the peach at snowdriftfarm.com it was really peachy and strong smelling. All the rest of the FO's and EO's that I bought there seem to be working quite well in my containers. The tests (50/50 soy/paraffin) are very strong with the HT and the CT. www.snowdriftfarm.com

My bad, the peach and cucumber are FO's. I bought several bottles of various different scents and had to look at the itemized receipt to clarify which were EO's and which were FO's. I read where there is a test for EO's to put a drop on a piece of paper and let it evaporate. If there is no oil stain left over then it is uncut. The EO's that I bought passed the test. The FO's leave an oil stain but FO's are supposed to anyway according to a book I was reading.

I found the only shop in town that makes FO's at a reasonable price. They have EO's as well. Their lavender FO is like $3/oz. The EO lavender is double but still no where near what the alchemist charges here, though it does not sniff nearly as strong. So I bought a dozen 4 oz bottles of various fragrances to play with. Some are pretty strong like the peach and cucumber and cedar. http://www.snowdriftfarm.com/ They have a "club" that you can join for $49/year. 10 percent off all the time, another 10 percent on the first Friday of the month (busy day for them) and the same on your birthday and the day before and after your birthday. They are into soap making, not candles, but all the FO's and EO's are probably fine in candles. I'll know this weekend.

I bought a meat slicer at Costco for $49.00 and used it to cut some wax. I was using it to cut sheet wax (probably should have used a hammer and a chisel) but I got to thinking that a pillar in the slicer, slow, would come out pretty flat. Probably faster than the heat type levelers. The gal that makes candles at Rustic Candles in Tucson has a leveler of some sort. I looked at the bottom of her pillars and they have a slicing pattern on them that is suggestive of a very large round rotating machine somewhat similar but bigger than the Costco meat slicer and probably with the cutting on the flat surface rather than the edge. Reminded me of the patterns from a large flat sander.

I looked at 3d printers at the SIGGRAPH 2010 computer graphics show (I go almost every year) and using candle wax is probably not going to work. I think Roland makes a printer for $9K that "might" be able to use candle wax, but you get one print per print head (expensive) and it really isn't feasible. Most of the additive printers use heat, which makes the candle wax turn to a liquid and you get a blob if you try it. There is a guy (I'll find his website when I go through my stuff) who has free plans for a $700 build your own subtractive machine that uses a high speed dremel and it does compound curves pretty well. He showed me a wood and a foam block that were cut into leaving a perfect area to fill with silicone to make a mold. What caught my attention is that it was able to cut in a square smaller than the block size with a dinosaur head protruding (subtractive process, positive image). The computer graphics process to make this was to use a dinosaur model and boolean it into a cube then size the cube less than the block that you use. Pretty easy stuff for CG (Computer Graphics) folks to do. Then when the dremel cut the image into the wood or foam, you just pour in the silicone and you have half your mold. Flip the image around in the CG program and re-cut the block and you have the other side. How to mate the sides or use them is what I am not familiar with.

Oh, and there are specialty paper stores like Paper Plus that have foils for laserjet printers, etc, that might do what you want.

Don't overlook fishing stores. Cabella's and a bunch of other fishing supply have foil. I like picking up left over Christmas foils in January at the dime store and then using them for lures. Might be worth a look.

Anyone have any experience with making molds? I'd love to see a thread on this. I have been looking at some high tech ideas that are getting a bit more in line with some hobbyists budgets. There are a ton of computer graphics programs on the market that can be used to make a polygon mesh of a dolphin or person, etc. Then posed into a position you like. Then the mesh can be sent to a rapid prototype machine that can build the object in something like wood (subtractive) or plastic (additive) and use to make a mold. Either process of subtractive or additive can be made in positive or negative, so coming up with a master for a mold is pretty easy. I was thinking that it could be an interesting process to come up with whatever object you like and pose that object (preening dragon?) and then make a mold for either an embed or tart or maybe even a pillar. Modeling the object and getting it to a rapid prototype machine is the easy part for me. What I don't know much about is material selection (silicone is the easiest) and what people's pet peeves are about the molds they buy.

Nothing new under the sun here, it is a type of human nature. When I was in the aviation business I learned that there are two kinds of people.... Those who stand out by lowering others around them ... and ... those who stand out by raising their quality above others. I think we all respect and admire the latter.

There is a guy at the local farmer's market that makes his own EO Lavender from his lavender farm. It is $108.00/volume oz and the smell from the bottle is a bit (though barely) stronger in smell. I'm not sure how he makes it, but I am pretty sure it is pure extract.

Oh, the shop is www.alchemistallc.com and the sales lady (the lady that does the blends was out for medical at the time) said they were very reasonable on prices. The only other shop in town that sells EO's is $42.00/volume ounce.

I went to a local shop that sells EO's at $35/volume oz. and bought some Lavender. Wow was it strong to sniff! Made a container, 8 oz blend. Ecosoya 135 (85 percent) and paraffin (15 percent) and mixed a few drops. Not much of a result. When I added 5 ml of the EO in the next test, it was very strong. It was much stronger to smell in the container before lighting the wick, but it did a good job even when burning. So I made another for the girlfriend and she wanted the color changes so I reheated. DEAD. No CT at all. Might be the soy, might be that EO's just don't go well with candles. I am going to try a mix of FO and EO in the next test and see what that is like. Maybe the max FO with a few drops of EO. Oh, its about five cents a drop.

Hi, I'm new. I hope to sell at the local Farmers Market. For now I have some work to do and some formulas to finalize. Getting close. I'm still in the learning stage. Have a few soy / paraffin containers that seem to be burning well in a 8 oz mason jar, wide lid, with a flat braided wick. Still working out the scents. Girlfriend likes the Yankee brands because of the CT so that is my mission now, to come up with a greater CT in some of the aromatherapy types. I enjoyed lurking here, there are some fantastic threads and the art gallery of what your candles look like is absolutely fabulous.