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I usually carry my candles early in the morning with the air on in the car and they make it just fine. I use those blue pouches that you put in the freezer and place those down in my tote box or pack in coolers to prevent sweating. HTH Steve

NG has plenty of strong, good quality fos IMHO. Their 7up Pound Cake is really good, Caribbean, Tropical Breeze, the Downey dupes are super stong, but I use at least an ounce per pound. Candle Cocoon is amazing with most fragrances at half an ounce but the price is higher and the selection is smaller than NG or Peak. I think of a really good fragrance oil in terms of complexity as well as strength. Lyschel is tops in my book and her oils are tops as well. Her Creme Brulee Cafe will run you out of the house its so strong, Peony White Tea is just beautiful and is wonderful in cp soaps, and of course there"s Vanilla Voodoo which is to die for. HTH Steve

I really like Aroma Haven/Rustic Escentuals fragrance oils; especially the KY line of fos and the tart wax. Their customer service is very good and the quality of their oils is very nice and reasonably priced. I use the KY tart wax and a number of the KY oils. HTH Steve

J50 is a work horse paraffin that works perfectly with zinc wicks. Expect sooting and mushrooming with heavy fragrance oils but you do get brilliant colors and not pastels. You will need to repour and the cold throw and hot throw are acceptable but all of this will leave you wanting something better. The J223 is the best of the paraffin blends IMHO and works well with zincs and colors beautifully but does not require a repour (it does tend to sink around the wick), not quite as much soot but about the same with mushrooming on the wicks. The hot thow is wonderful and the cold throw is usually acceptable but all of this will leave you wanting something better. I have tried numerous blends of the j waxes but was never satisfied but the 223 will always have a place in my heart; its good wax. The 6006 at 85% with 15% soy poured at 185 degrees into clean room temperatue jars and cooled in the open will give you good results IMHO. HTH Steve

I mix Blue Skies and Sweet Amber Musk at 50/50 and call it Blue Amber. Sells really well and has an awesome ct/ht. If you soap it be prepared to move real quick, cause it accelerates like crazy but makes wonderful cp soap. Steve

Your style is so clean (no pun intended) and your ingredients are top notch; just wish I could come out to Cali and study your multi-generational knowledge. Just great work, as always. Steve

You're soap is beautiful, I love the color and the textures. Wow, so sorry that you're hand problem has taken a turn for the worse. I'll keep you in my prayers and hope that an answer will come soon. You are such a talented and giving person Babs, hang in there and let me know if you need anything. Steve

I use m&p for stuff like that and use cookie cutters (small ones) to make cp embeds. I take a bar of soap when its young and slice it and dice it with the cookie cutters. It works out great for soaps that aren't great movers and need to be used for something worthwhile. HTH Steve

I have the two pound acrylic log mold and have purchased silk, clays and other stuff and have had great customer service and reasonably shipping. HTH Steve

I suspect that all of us wonder if we will cross the line from small time hand crafters to big time manufacturers? The bottom line would be to produce a quality product at an affordable price. I make container candles and they are hand-made but its not something you would call artistic. Pillars and specialty candles require artistic talent IMHO. I don't think there is a machine that produces a unique one of a kind item that makes an artistic statement....but I could be wrong. Steve

By George I think you've got it.

You're going to find it a lot easier once you determine how much liquid your jars will comfortably hold with room for the wick under the lid. I use 8 oz of fragranced wax in my 12 oz salsa jars. The jar could hold more but the cost of the candle is held down and customers aren't going to ask you for a 10 oz candle KWIM? Some adhesion to jar walls is affected when you pour past the bend or into the neck of the jar. It's really not hard once you get all the specifics. So, I can pour two candles with 15 oz of wax and 1 oz of fragrance and none left over or wasted. Make sense? Steve

I use 15 oz of melted wax to 1 oz of fo. That has worked well for my wax and is easy to go up or down in amounts of wax used (8 oz of wax and 1/2 oz fo). HTH Steve

No, the stick parts are stainless.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement. Its such a learning process and I guess that's what keeps me motivated. Thank goodness for those of you who provide tutorials and advice that otherwise would keep most of us in the dark about techniques. I hope someday to be as good at the craft as Babs or Irena or Kitn or gosh all of you on the board (Maybe even Scented). Between the Board and Youtube I don't feel so all alone about some of this stuff. Thanks again. Steve

The cake is a three layer strawberry gm with frosted cupcake frosting and imbeds The soap is omh using the fo from ky at ah/re The cupcake is bubblegum For some reason the layers on the cake have decided to separate and the frosting decided to stay soft. I'm hoping that the cake and the omh will harden up in a couple of weeks and maybe the cake won't totally separate. The soap fairies came to see me when I was finishing the cake and that's a whole other story. Thanks for looking.

I use both td and vanilla stabilizer which works most of the time but now always. HTH Steve

So far so good. The soap is a beautiful beige and doesn't look like it will turn but you know how that works. Thanks for the info and good luck on the egg yolk. Steve

Clarus wax. Stasis 3022 is 70% soy and 30% paraffin and was once known as Green Leaf or GL. I've been with that wax for about 5 years now. It's working really well for my melts formula. HTH

Thanks Candybee. So your bar holds up well in the shower after cure?

I'm finding that some fos that do poorly in candles do great in melts (figure that one out) and some give me days of fragrance. It kinda goes STRONG, strong, still there, just barely there but I've had a 1/2 ounce melt in the burner for several weeks that still mildly fragrances the house. I'm using 6 oz of my Stasis and 10 oz of ky parasoy tart wax with 1.5 oz of fo. I pour into silicone flower cupcake liners and they look like little sunbursts, so I call them suburst melts. I'm hoping some of my dud fos will pay for themselves in melts. HTH Steve

I have the medium sized beads and they are not noticeable in the soap except as little bumps. Sprinkled on top they are very noticeable and I use the white ones to imitate sugar on imbeds like cherries or strawberries. I call them jojoba scrubbies in my bars. HTH Steve

I know this is weird but customers wouldn't buy soap (mp or cp) from those molds. I can cut it from a log or make regular bar sizes and sell it just fine. I don't know if people thought they weren't really hand made soaps or what but left those a long time ago. I have a beautiful hummingbird oval mold but cp doesn't like to come out of the little grooves and lines of the design and then if it does will eventually crumble a little. HTH Steve

Quick question on adding oatmeal. I made a small 2 pound batch of OMH cp this week-end. I used 100% gm and KY OMH fo and added 1 tblsp pp of honey and ground oatmeal. Used a couple tsp of td and used toasted whole oatmeal on the top and so far it is quite nice (beige color) but it is very wet and I probably should have left it in the mold another day. Does too much ground oatmeal tend to make this soap initially wet and then does it get crumbly after it dries? I never considered how the oatmeal would absorb liquid or might turn crumbly. So far it does not appear to have gelled and there is only one tiny spot of orange honey in one bar. If all goes well this should be a nice bar of soap. TIA Steve