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.