StacysScentsations(DH)

I say we ... well there is a we but I would say we anyway.

I am still waiting on my molds but I hope my first pillar look that good. I will be happy with that for the first time up to bat. I vision mine somewhere in 2 to three pieces after I unmold.

I have seen the and/or on products before but with something like cocoa butter I am not sure I have a friend who is highly allergic to chocolate not sure if that means cocoa butter or not though. I think I have seen stuff listed as may contain blah blah blah. I dont like that as it makes it apear like "we through whatever we had in ther" lol. I wonder if you can list it as "Natural butter" or "Refined namtural butters" or if that is to vague as well. I like the lable it looks good on the tube.

If your neighbor isnt far why not just bring a small stock then rotate it before the have a chance to wrinkle?

Now im by no means any kind of candle expert (Yet) but I think this may be able to be acheived if you used 1 heavy wax and one light wax. if you poured the heavy and let it set up a little and pured the light sealed the mold turned it at about 45 degrees and spun it quick. kinda like that splatter paint on the record player but very fast. Tell me what you think

I tried the wax paper thing and I dont like it. They dont look like the ones you buy. I think the soap soaked through a little bit and puddled on the bottom. Myabe I should try to add a smidge of water to thin it out? or maybe I will hang the next time. I know one thing a little bit of soap does a whole lot of petals

My name is Doug and you are very welcome for the info. It is nice to see people actually care about such things. Even though it is a part of any business that wants to be online some people tend to overlook it. The whole "Build it and they will come" Days are long long gone. If I knew 10 years ago what I know now chances are I wouldnt be here typing this. Yahoo stock went public for a quarter a share. Go Figure. Edited to add: If you read the article on google and understand the part about them reading font tags etc. Keep in mind with css you can make a <H1> tag be any size you want. I think there was more about that in Robins hubby tutorial (which is also a good read)

I add beezwax to my soywax also for the smooth tops and I also add it to my soy tarts, it makes them a little firmer with less damage and so easy to pop out of the molds.

Yeah silicone usually comes in a caulk tube. Make sure you get 100% silicone. Not a silicone/latex mix. The silicone will add the adhesion and will withstand the heat. If you have a local building supply you could also get a tri polymer witch is the best adhesion. nomatter what you get I think you want to get clear in case it oozes.

How about something like this:

I never knew so many people would be into the seo thing on a scandle site. Anyway PR is really only utilized by google for the most part. But as we all know google is the one you have to concern yourself with if you want to be found. http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html is an interesting read about pagerank. If you have a pr10 and link to a pr1 you will bring the 1 up. If you link to 10 pr1 sites that arent directly related to your site you will drop. As I said and you pointed out stacys site is dynamic but does a html version everyday and changes anything that changed. It is a tough call weather to use a dynamic site if you are small. First off is it cost effective, second off if you want that homemade look to your website that is harder with php and stuff as usually that stuff is more corporate looking (or maybe the developers are more intuned with the corporate look) I like php always have and always will untill something better comes along. But for now good old fashioned html is still here for a while. I imagine it will phase out eventually as high speed becomes more available to the masses.

Good luck. I think the natural handmade thing is in so you will do better than last year i bet

PrairieDweller, I do not take offense that is a valid question. It is fine to have a dynamic website and rank just fine on google. Stacys Site has been up for about a month or 2 and and is already doing ok on the search engines. I have really targeted any search engines as she doesnt have that much yet. The old "Dynamic Sites" wont rank well is old school. look at every single pr10 on the web it is a dynamic site. Look at all the "Big Boys" every one is static. The fact is a couple of reasons, 1.Stacysscentsations automatically publishes a static site and updates everyday to match the dynamic site for those search engine that dont list dynamic yet. 2. To do a static site would be way to time consuming to add edit or update products. This can be done on a dynamic website in minutes and with the click of a button can be implemented site wide. 3. You cannot get anywhere near the features with a static site that you can get with a dynamic. Ex. I know who goes on the website what they look at how many times they look at it how long they stay on a page where they come from etc. - If you go look at a tart warmer 10 times but never buy it but then you buy a tart. I am immediatly notified and i know you looked at that tart warmer 10 times. I bet tommorrow when I send you an email saying that tart wamer is on sale for one day only you come buy it. 4. Our pc rings when we get site visitors ansd logs everything this is grat to let you know what products are popular which arent which ones may be priced a little high etc. 5. Our products are directly connecting to our shipping partners - ex. If i say I have 1000 votives instock and you buy 10 our storefront knows what each tart weighs that they are in stock and that your credit card went through. Once this happens the website itself notifies ups that we have a dellivery and to where, contacts the website back with a tracking number, contacts the customer with their order confirmation and tracking number, emails my wife and lets her know she has an order, she logs in and your invoice and labels are already generated waiting to print. I am currently taking this one step further by implementing email to fax then instread of emailing her it will automatically fax her the details. she will pick the order slap the labels on the boxes and wait for the ups man tommorrow as he know he has a pickup. This is all done why she is making soap and candles. Grant it that may seem a little overboard but I dont usually do small site I do corporate sites (hense her site design) It is both good and bad. Alot of people like a corporate look however alot of candlemakers like the homespun look (im sure their customers do too) so it depends on the market. A large company wants a professional, efficient website that does everything except bake cakes. LOL they need features like inventory tracking, qhanitiy discounts and advanced shipping features. it enable tem to keep costs way down. 6. As far as the dynamic content there is also an html catalog like I said. So my wife has absolutly NO knowledge of web or graphic design - search engines etc. And hos no inclination to learn any of it. So she does not want to add meta inffo etc. If she adds a product and wants to add keywords specific for it there is a spot for her to type a few. If not the website reads her description generates its own keywords and creates the page title and realted products based on the specific product. Once she adds the product name that is the page title etc. I hope this helps and didnt confuse the heck out of you. But search engines are now gearing to dynamic content more and more every day. they have to because of this: from the census website.At 100 billion in sales a year from the US only and growing ... html is gonna have to move over for a more efficient and streamlined technology. Think about sites that sell thousands of products. By the time you updated them they would be out and new products would be in.

I was at walmart and got the mini loaf mold. It is red that may be what you were talking about the flexible on. Let me tell you if you our about an inch or so of soap in one of those wait a day and pop right out pretty clean too. Weird shaped bar sorta but not bad.

OK here it is. Can you all take a second and tell me who has the best cristmas scents in what scent. I know different co have different scents I see it here all the time this one from that place is better than that one from this place. I dont want to waste money trying a gazillion scents from a gazillion places. I want to know what your favs are for holidays and from where. I hope that came out right...TIA

I currently use snowtop plain but am almost out. Does anyone know of a comparable wax. I think I want to stay with soy as I am in florida and even with the heat here they always ask if it is soy wax I use? Go figure. Anyway I like this wax and kinda got the hang of it wicking and puring wise so I am looking for similar if possible. TIA

Thanks I will try the ones I have then. Anyone know what I do after I dip them? Do I hang them or can I lay them on something till they dry?

Sounds like a good night to me. It is very satisfying to have a handful of cold hard cash for your hard work....even if you will go buy new stuff to make more with it it still feels good.

LOL my first batch i went to craftstore got huge containers who knows what wax and some long wicks....Burned a hole right down the center...I immediatly realized I needed help it started to sink in that you obviously cant just throw some wax & wicks in a container and have a candle. I mean a tunnel down the middle like you shot a hole in it.

I got little mini icecub tray. well the trays are the real size but the icecubes look like gumdrops. I have used these for tarts.

Hey there I never even thoght about the logs. Can you answer my ? about the labels you dont have to reply here pm me or email me if you are interested. You can sloe click the link in my sig. Thanks

pm me with your site addy and I will take care of it for you. At least to get it listed then if you want you can follow up with some of the others suggestions. Doug

Thats kinda informative but I little outdated like you said. But still clear and in plain english. Although some things have changed since its writing the overall "concept" os still the same. And it would definatly help a newbe at least get listed even if not to the top of the ranks Doug

Hey dont fret camper...when you get some time let me know and I will walk you through it. It is very useful and the possiblilties are endless for now. You can also get wysiwyg programs to help you along the way. I can look for a simple one when you have time and explain it to you. Baisially instead of having to know the hex codes for colors you can just click them and it will show you what things will look like. As far as search engine and keywords heres the skinny... there are four, maybe five now search engines that feed all other search engines on the web. Some more then others, for example up until the begining of the year aol and msn used google only if they didnt have anything at all or enough of a selection for what you were looking for. Google itself started out using dmoz. As far as how the main one works thats a different topic but I assure you it is interesting. For the most part a search engine indexes the first 255 words (5 characters = a word) of the first page of your site. After that it crawls (quick scans) the rest of the entire site. The more words you have throughout your site that match those fors 255 words the better you are for a nitch market. ANother big thing is backlinks who links to you and more importantly who you link to. But enough boring seo talk. contact me when you have time and I will explain how to make different search engines see different things then what your visitors see. I should write a newsletter. Doug

I use snowrop soy mixed with 1oz of beeswax pp of soy seems to work well