RobinInOR

That sounds like a really cool idea.

I'm an RBO girl - haven't used OO in ages, only in my first batches. Hazelnut oil is the most similar to olive in fatty acid composition, but it's probably just as $$$ if not worse. Almond is close as well.... RBO has less oleic. Maybe you can find something similar by fussing with blends of soybean/almond/sunflower and such. There is a high oleic sunflower, don't know how $$$ that is though.

I use both a straight paraffin (1343) and a paraffin/soy blend.. Other differences: Paraffins have a larger range of surface looks you can get - shiny, matte, mottled, rustic. Paraffin changes it's look more with the use of different additives. Although palm waxes are being developed that also have different surfaces - granite, feathered, crystal..... Don't think you'd ever get shiny out of soy though. Soy/naturals are more "brittle" waxes - they don't flex as much. You can't hug them in a pillar.

I just use the Quickbooks that came with my Powerbook - I've fussed with it so it does a bit of inventory. I don't report inventory costs for taxes so I just use it as a reminder to order stuff. I enter invoices & print for customer I record deposits to bank, paypal, propay I enter bills & log payments (which updates inventory amounts) I enter a transaction to reduce inventory when I make a batch of something. I use the P&L statement to get my data for the Schedule C. So far it's working quite well. My needs are very simple since we don't have sales taxes to deal with. Only bummer is I don't have an interface from my osCommerce shopping cart to it, so I do have to reenter a customer order. Eventually I'll mod the osC shopping cart to link to my Quickbooks - I'm just lazy and don't want to take the time - too much like real work.

Mica won't sparkle a lot in CP since it's opaque - it doesn't get enough light to highlight the mica. I only use it to swirl - I think in this bar I used 1/2 teaspoon of gold mica in a 1/3 cup of soap for the swirl.

When you start a new thread, look at the bottom under "additional items". There's a section to check "start poll" and it asks you how many options you want. When you hit the "submit post", it will prompt you first for the poll options.

Everyone's sites are looking so nice! I can tell you all have been doing a *lot* of work on them. Mine hasn't changed much since the beginning of the year when I went to osCommerce. Front page is http://watersgulch.com which dives into individual catalog pages. Beginning of catalog is http://watersgulch.com/catalog I am *so* far behind in taking new pictures it isn't funny. The whole candle section needs to be revamped, because I'm not really selling all those anymore, or at least not pushing them as much.

Tube It's so simple to carry around, and you don't get your fingers in it. I took the liberty of adding an actual poll to your thread, hope you don't mind (FYI - I think anyone now can start a poll, not just moderators)

It's very expensive to get a legal bar code. For your own personal use you can print them all you want, but when you get out into the retail world ya gotta follow the rules like Matthew outlined. I think I figured it would cost me about $2K. Some POS systems allow a generic test manufacturing ID - you might ask if he has one of those available with some unused codes for you to use. Though that's not really legal - even these resellers who sell you bits and pieces of a manufacturing ID aren't really kosher.

They're both inorganic pigments. Ultramarines are based on different minerals that are reacted with calcium and sulfur, oxides are based on iron oxides. The first ultramarine was made of lapis lazuli and gave a blue, the first iron oxides were red (think rust). Now you can get a pretty good range of colors. For B&B they are all manufactured - natural oxides and ultramarines can't be used because of the unknown heavy metal content that can occur. The colors stay pretty true - not like FDC dyes that change with pH. I class them as "natural"-ish , though some don't. I find UM and oxides act about the same - I use UM for violet/blue/green, and oxide for red/black/yellow/orange.

Very attractive looking! They should like them a lot..

Those all look great - even the bevel Yours look good with that larger bevel (I'm assuming you made that one with the same dimensions as the pattern?) you've got it even all the way around.

The "whitest" oils out there are lard, tallow, coconut, palm kernal... My tallow soap turned out a tiny bit whiter than the one I do using palm.

Trace is what happens when saponification occurs. Oils are splitting apart and are turning into soap and glycerin molecules. They are more opaque than the oils. You can stop at any level of trace, really. If you get it way too thin, you run the risk of everything separating out in the mold, especially if you're using tempermental ingredients. Thick trace the pattern of stirring stays around - very thick pudding. Use this if you want to design swirls and patterns on the top of your soap. I tend to pour at a pretty heavy trace on my botanical soaps. I like it when the drips from the spoon stay in place for a bit then disappear. Go for a thinner trace if you want to pour in a slab and do cool swirling. The thinner the better. If I can see a little bit of a pattern that fades back into the pot, but everything looks pretty emulsified and opaque, that should be fine. Thinner trace though can increasee the cure time (maybe since more saponification has to be done) and I've also found I get a bit more ash (maybe since there's more lye contacting the air) Try it at different levels and see which works the best for you.

HDPEs can work. It really depends on what you've got - light and heat can cause reactions to plastic. Best to do a stability test and see how it reacts to plastic over time.

Here's my tutorial http://watersgulch.com/howtocp.shtml Millers soap is also good - and try http://teachsoap.com . You can google "tutorial soapmaking" and find a bunch of information from different suppliers.

the one I'm using is the MyWeigh KD600. It weighs to 11 pounds, down to .1 oz or 1 gram. It's not the best if you're making lotion from scratch, cuz that needs to be down to .01 oz and .1 gram for preservatives usually, but this works well for me. It has a stainless top, and best of all, it comes with covers for the buttons so they don't get all mucked up. You can search for different vendors - Old Will Knot has them, and I got mine from another CA company.

WAY too much lavender FO You might find at high concentrations that one doesn't smell so good - really - use .5 oz or even less. 1343 'bulges' more than other waxes I've tried - it's *very* elastic and will contort out of shape before it breaks. Try playing with your wax in your pour pot after it cools a bit - almost like taffy

CDs are similar in construction to HTPs, and they burn "hotter" for their size than LXs. I use LXs in jars... Never tried 4786, but I did test J223 and had problems with throw as well. Hot throw is tough - you've got all the usual variables, plus you're throwing in flame and heat. Most of the scent is going to come from the melt pool - the fragrance molecules do have to end up in the air and travel to reach your nose So that's why the "more heat" helps - besides releasing the fragrance, it creates air currents to help move everything around. We can all understand your frustration

You really need to make bigger batches or get a scale that can measure correctly. Too much preservative can be irritating to the skin - too little preservative won't preserve. Why take the chance?

I think everyone would like a natural preservative. There *are* some that are promising, but I don't think they are generally available to home crafters, or are very expensive. There are preservatives that are paraben free and that aren't formaldehyde donors, so finding one of those might be the closest to "natural" you can get. It's quite an explosive topic you have to figure out what you are willing to risk, for yourself and your customers. I've given up on lotions this year, but was testing Optiphen, and it seemed to be doing well. Edensong I think was testing Biopen?

I've used them in a soy blend, and I mix EOs/FOs in paraffin now. I found if I use them at the same level of FOs, eventually they turn kind of sour and stinky. And it's really hit or miss - especially with lavenders. So far I mix lavender EO w/ Peak's lavender FO, and I've got a lemongrass/litsea/ginger blend that's "OK", but kind of sharp. Mints can give you a fuel smell. I never had much luck with spearmint or peppermint, but in blends they work OK. Patch as usual can take a larger wick. I'd start off somewhere around .5 oz per pound of wax. And yes, you can mix EOs and FOs safely. It's actually kind of nice - the EOs can give a fragrance oil a bit of a kick. Or an FO can give a EO a bit of a sweet edge.

If you have %s and need to convert to actual weights, another way of doing it without the math headache is to enter the percents into the MMS calculator. That will give you a 100 ounce recipe, but you can resize the recipe to whatever you want on the second page and it will still keep the correct proportions. If you have weights and want %s, same thing. Enter the weights in MMS, and the second page will tell you what the %s are.

Have you read this? http://mals-e.com/help.php?pg=22 Make sure you're using the right characters in the voucher mask. For example, the simplest is CMMYYNNNN. Where the C is the index into the table of what the voucher is. Usually a 1. Them MMYY stands for the month And NNNN is a number.. For example, your voucher in Mals is CMMYYNNNN On a voucher, when you issue one, use a number like 112050001 to issue a voucher that's good thru the end of the year. And define in the first table what the voucher is good for - a flat amount, a percent, free shipping, whatever...

VERY eye catching!