I bought two products from two different sellers. One product is perfect, awesome, I love it. The only hitch was that it arrived a little banged up from shipping.
The second product I'm not that impressed with--it's like the materials the seller used weren't right for the task. I like it, I mean, I can tell what it's supposed to be, but it's not something I would get again or buy as a gift.
I also placed my first order with ScentimentalGifts, for a bunch of fragrance oils for Christmas presents. This was the holdup on a batch of presents. I spent a lot but I think it will take care of 3-4 people. Maybe as many as 5-6. I would like to send out a few little things as small gifts to friends.
I am excited to receive these as they are the last piece of my gifting puzzle. I'm still working on the shirts for Greg. I am also going to make him an awesome Camp Anawana shirt in addition to his "Skills for Kills, Agent." shirt.
AND! I signed up for my next swap. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time but never really had a reason to do. I'm going to be participating in a zine swap! You make 5-10 copies of your zine and distribute it to your craftswap partners. Yay! I'm thinking of a very small book, like 3x3 inches with 10-15 pages that will include a few short poems, a short essay, a few drawings, maybe a short tutorial on something, a few recommendations (books, websites, cds) and that will be it!
I got home tonight and saw I had a package. I have been waiting for my CandleScience order for about a week. I was pretty fired up to try my hand at making soy candles for all the reasons people speak of.
So let's get to it.
I didn't really have anything on hand to make candles out of but I was super excited to try so I decided to go for the ole blank pint glasses. We have a zillion of them and I knew the glass would be thick enough to use for a candle.
I got 5 scents in the order (one of which was FREE!) and they all smelled great. I picked well, I think. That was my favorite part...I can't wait to order more scents, especially now that I own 5+ lbs of wax (which constitutes the majority of the shipping cost).
So I don't have a scale or anything (or a thermometer or whatever) I had to guesstimate a lot of this work which may or may not work out for me. I found out that the ratio of flaked wax to melted wax is about 2:1. So if you melt down 2 cups of wax, you're going to end up with 1 cup of liquid pourable wax. This worked out pretty great. And, if you're making a pint glass, you are making less than a pound of wax so use less than an ounce of fragrance oil. I used a table that said 3/4 oz = 1 1/2 tablespoons (which IS something I had on hand). So I made up my 5 pint candles and they're in various stages of drying now. I want to burn one to see how the throw is but I also just want to give them all as gifts. So I guess I'll have to sacrifice one to see how important it is to measure perfectly and if the temperature was too scaldy to pour fragrance in. Also! I ordered colored wax bits to color the candles and those were really neat. The color during the liquid stage is SO much darker than the set wax. The lavender bits looked *super super* dark purple, like almost black, but now that they're almost set up, the color is a very modest lavender.
I don't think these will be gifts in and of themselves but I think they'll make a pleasantly surprisingly gift-on-the-side. Like a large stocking stuffer. I plan to have fun making custom labels. I don't want to say too much in case someone is reading who might be receiving but one of them is very cute and clever, if I do say so myself.
I can say without worry that Greg's mom, Joanne, is going to be getting a Lavender Vanilla candle that smells SO yummy. I thought this would be my least favorite (since I'm not a lavender fan) but it smells really good. It's mostly vanilla but a sweet floral version that doesn't smell like candy. I hate the frosting/cupcake/candy vanilla smell. Sickeningly-cavity-sweet vanilla. This isn't like that at all. It's a fresh vanilla with an extra something (that doesn't smell like lavender to me). I also like the Yankee candle that is "Lavender Lemon," so go fig. Maybe I do like lavender.
