I know it’s to be expected and all, but I can’t help but be frustrated when things don’t turn out right.
Tonight, I tested out my new Cranberry scent, and made five tealights and one teeny votive for myself. The scent seems to be OK, but the color is off. I made the “cranberry” color as vivid as I could, and it ended up coming out more pinkish than cranberry. Maybe next time I’ll try my “red berry” dye and see how that turns out.
Last night, I made up a super-quickie batch of Eggnog tealights. They smelled OK, if a bit weaker than I’d wanted. I totally screwed up the color, though. I’m not used to working with *that* small of a batch, and I’d thought that a little touch of caramel color would look good mixed with the “sunshine” dye in the eggnog candles. Nope — they all turned out looking like somebody left the eggnog on the stove to burn or something.
On top of that, I put five different fragrances of tealights in one container, and the scents overpowered one another overnight. The Coffee totally made the Eggnog smell like nothing, and the Coconut was just barely there. Maybe I should look into a little bitty shrink-wrap machine for the individual tealights in my tealight multi-packs? I dunno.
On Friday night, I tested my Evergreen fragrance. One votive for me, and nine tealights. Doesn’t smell like evergreen at all, and the hunter/moss green dye I used came out more on the mossy side than the hunter side.
At least Mark’s Amaretto and Coke candles came out pretty good. The color wasn’t exact, since I ran out of the french vanilla dye and had to make do with caramel instead, but the scent was just as I remembered it. I also made myself a votive of it, and burned that tonight, and the scent throw is awesome on that one. I lit it in the basement, and the smell came all the way up into the living room. Nice.
Note to self: Don’t advertise a fragrance on your candle site until you’ve thoroughly tested it, approve of the fragrance, and have the dye ratio figured out. I now have some people interested in Evergreen and Eggnog candles, and I’ll have to just hope they forget about them until I’ve come up with something better than what I’ve got right now.
Pine essential oil, anyone?