dianaschnuth

Listen. I know everybody who reads this isn’t all excited about candlemaking. I know this isn’t a candle blog. However: this is where I write everything I’d normally write in a journal — well, almost everything. I do have a private file for potentially embarrassing dreams and rants about people who might read my blog and things like that.

But I digress. My point is that I know you’re not all keen on my candling exploits. So, if you’d care to read my stream-of-consciousness number-crunching, continue reading beyond the cut. If not, simply enjoy a picture of my 3.75oz hexagonal votives:

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Well. I’m finally getting some income to balance out the $100+ expenditure on candle supplies in the past couple of months. It’s slow going, but I have faith that Gena will singlehandedly pimp my candles to the entire building where I work.

Sight unseen — or, rather, scent unsmelled — Gena decided that she wanted four, count ’em, four eggnog candles in the quilted cups like I made a few years back. She also told me that she’s a total nut about Christmastime, and has something like seven trees up in her house during the holidays. She sets up an annual gingerbread-themed display, she said, which got me thinking about making gingerbread candles, too.

So, I ordered eggnog and gingerbread scents, among other fragrance oils, from my new favorite scent supplier. I also hit the local Goodwill for more cups, as I only had two. Good thing that the quilted cups are among the glassware you will *always* find at Goodwill; I ended up buying four matching cups out of the 20 or so they had. All matching.

Made two eggnog candles Monday evening, and brought one to work on Tuesday for Gena’s approval. When she drooled her OK (and it *did* smell pretty damned good), I made two more, plus a votive jar for me. Or for selling later, whatever. Brought those to work today, all wrapped up in tissue paper and packed into a gift bag. Got paid in cash. Good deal. Fun times were had by all.

Later in the day, someone else in our department happened to be hobnobbing in Gena’s cube, and saw the candle she had sitting on her desk. Gena gladly volunteered that I made the candle, and that I sell candles, and sent Julie over to my cube to smell my wares. Now, my tealights’ scents have faded from being in such close proximity to other scents, so most of my tealights had just kind of mushed together into a generic soy candle smell… but the cranberry tealight was apparently strong enough and fresh enough to spark Julie’s interest. She requested a cranberry candle, once I told her how much I charge for various sizes. (Four bucks for a four-ounce large votive, BTW.)

In making Julie’s candle (and one for me) this evening, I have officially used up all of my cranberry scent. If this is a hit, I’ll be needing to make another candle supply order, even though I had told myself that I wouldn’t buy more supplies until I absolutely had to. But, shit, if cranberry sells for the holidays, I’m gonna buy more cranberry.

Maybe tomorrow night, I can finally get around to testing that gingerbread… God, I’ve turned into a craft geek.

I just got an e-mail from a friend of a co-worker, asking if I do parties.

?!?!

I had to reply that I don’t have enough candles made at one time to do a party, and that’s the truth. I’d be making candles every night for two weeks to have enough to give a candle party. I remember how those Partylite parties were, back in 1995. They had so many awesome fragrances, and neat candle holders, and overpriced doodads, and you *had* to order something! You just *had* to! I don’t know if I have that kind of draw yet.

For that matter, I don’t have a large enough bank of OMG-this-is-so-good fragrances yet, either. So far, it looks like this:

Favorites
* Amaretto
* Amaretto & Coke (my own special fragrance combination)
* Spiced Apple
* Drakkar
* Chocolate Java Beans (another special recipe)
* Cranberry (I’ll have to make a bigger candle to be sure, though)

Untested So Far:
* Balsam Sandalwood
* Chocolate Brownie
* Lilac
* Very Vanilla
* Patchouli (Essential Oil)
* Lavender (Essential Oil)
* Cinnamon (Essential Oil)

WTF Not Even Close:
* Basil
* Evergreen (smells like fake evergreen, according to one person)

Everything Else That’s Nothing Special:
* Banana (intended to use in making a Banana Cream Pie combo, along with the…)
* Coconut (which could also be good with pineapple for a pina colada candle)
* Chamomile
* Eggnog
* Coffee (excellent combined with the Hershey’s Chocolate scent, which I may or may not reorder)
* Hazelnut (not bad with the Eggnog, although I need to try some different eggnog scents)
* Pumpkin Spice
* Spearmint
* Toasted Marshmallow
* White Shoulders

As I said recently, I have more stuff on order from various places, so there are more possibilities in store in the coming days and weeks.

I guess I’m feeling kind of like I’m spinning my wheels; but even if I managed to get a bite (like, say, someone wanting a party, or someone wanting me to be their wholesale soy candle supplier — both things have happened), I’m not prepared for “success”. But I don’t want to stock up for something that’s never going to happen… and I don’t want this to be the next big idea I have that never comes to fruition… and I don’t want to overthink it, either. 🙂

I guess the thing is that I feel like I’m on the verge of a fun and creative supplemental income, and I don’t want to blow it by trying too hard and not being able to deliver, or not trying hard enough and missing the boat.

Jesus Christ, Diana, it’s just candles. Don’t sweat it. *rolls eyes*

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?

Remember when Rob asked me to make him a manly candle? Well, that jump-started me back into candlemaking, and I made a batch of Amaretto and Coke candles last night. I ended up taking one of them to work with me, and quizzing my co-workers about what alcoholic beverage they thought it smelled like. Now I suddenly have major interest in my little enterprise — well, four potential buyers, anyway, and at least one person who might just buy a crapload of candles from me as Christmas gifts. Considering I’ve only ever sold one pack of tealights and one candle, that’s major interest.

Now I have to decide: do I gear up for a big run, and potentially have a bunch of candles and containers and scents and packaging material that might just end up taking up space; or do I keep my operation on the down-low, and only make custom candles as requested, keeping my inventory of premade candles at a minimum?

I’ve already decided that I want to SQL-ify my candle website, making it more easily updateable as I sell candles and as I get new fragrance and container inventory. Not redoing the design, just managing the content.

I guess the big question is, do I ramp up my production, at least of sample tealights? I’m saying that’s a yes. On the samples, I mean. Samples are good. Also, do I wait and see which of my current scents sell, and just focus on those, or do I branch out and get even more scents for diversity’s sake?

I don’t really expect answers from the peanut gallery — I’m just asking them to give myself something to think about, I guess. If you have any pearls of wisdom, though, I’ll gladly take them.

I do have a request, though. Name me off some mixed drinks that would smell good as a candle. Ones that I’ve already thought of:

• Amaretto Sour
• Amaretto and Coke
• Cosmopolitan (Cranberry, Orange & Lime)
• Sex on the Beach (Cranberry, Orange, Pineapple & Peach)
• B-52 (Kahlua & Bailey’s Irish Cream)

Any other ideas?

Update, 10/22/06: Additional ideas from my friends/readers:

• Mojito (Lime, Mint, Rum)

I have on order Lime, Kahlua, Bailey’s Irish Creme, and Bay Rum fragrances. I already have Amaretto and Cranberry and Coffee and Spearmint on hand. If I can come up with a way to make a White Russian (Mary) or a Jäger Monster (Fries), I’d definitely be up for those. For now, I think I’m going to focus on drinks that are a.) fruity or b.) include Kahlua.

Damn — now I’m going to have to do some “field research” to discover new candle scents… 😉