calculating cost of liquid dye

[aviator girl]

In calculating my costs to make my candles I am getting stumped on how to calculate the liquid dye cost per candle. Has anyone figured out how many drops are in an oz or bottle? I tried to search this and had no luck.

I don't use much in most of my candles per pound. However there are obviously a few darker colors that I use a little more. I was going to use an average amount of drops to figure cost. Just to plug something in I calculated 0.10 for dye per pound.

Just curious what you guys do/use. The color chips like redi-glow are obviously easier to figure out. Just can't quite figure the liquid amounts!:rolleyes2

I think it comes down to math and figuring out how many drops are in an ounce.

[megfarwell]

Well, I know when I was in college, for our science classes we always used 20 drops = 1 ml. Just did a google search, and there is 30 ml in 1 ounce, so 30 ml x 20 drops = 600 drops in an ounce?

I've never used liquid dyes, so I have no idea if that seems accurate or not. The only other way I could think to do it would be to physically count out all the drops you use, by using a tally sheet at your pour station maybe?

If you think 600 drops seems right, I guess then it would be a matter of how many drops per pound you use.

HTH!

[megfarwell]

Something else to add here.......I just looked at Candle Science's liquid dyes, and according to them, 1 oz. will color 40 lbs of wax to a "medium" shade.

So.....if you're using their recommendations, it would seem that 3-6 drops will make the "medium" shade. If you can get 40 lbs out of one 1 oz bottle, and a 1 oz bottle costs $4.95, 4.95/40 = $.12 per pound to color to "medium" shade.

For comparison's sake, with my 600 drops in a bottle theory above, and using 3 drops/per pound of wax, it came out to $.03 per pound.

To make a long story short......I think you're going to have to count your drops to be really accurate!

[ckelley116]

Something else to add here.......I just looked at Candle Science's liquid dyes, and according to them, 1 oz. will color 40 lbs of wax to a "medium" shade.

I do the same thing - except, I use Peak's liquid dyes, and their site states that one ounce of dye will color 125 lbs of wax to a medium shade. So I just divided $5.60 (the cost of 1 oz of dye) by 125 to come up with $0.0448 per pound. Then just divide that by the number of candles I can make from 1 lb of wax and get an approximate cost per candle. Of course, I dye some candles darker than a medium shade and with some I will just dip the dropper into the wax to get a light tint. It works out to an average cost though, and the overcompensation for the lighter candles works out to absorb the cost of dyeing the darker ones.

[aviator girl]

Thank you guys for taking the time to help me. Very nice of you!

This is great informatin and never thought to look to see if they actually put how many pounds of wax can be colored. I figured I would just average what I use since some are obviously going to take more and some are going to take less.

I thought about keeping track of drops. Obviously the most accurate way but not sure how dedicated I could be of keeping up with that for so long- at least until I go through a bottle of dye!

Thanks again. This information really does help!

[Sag_77]

I took and weighed out .01 on my scale and how many drops it took to get there. Then did the multiplication for how many drops ended up being in the 4oz bottles. After that I rounded down to the closest 100 to account for waste, it worked out to 4200 drops per 4oz bottle. The cost per drop is something like $.001 and after all the math to figure cost per item the dye still ends up being under 1 cent per votive or whatever is made. I hope some of that made sense!! :undecided

[grama]

I don't even count in the cost of liquid dye when I calculate my cost. It is to small an amount to worry about to me!

[barncat]

I round out and calculate and extra .01 per candle for UV and dye