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Anybody tried this one? They have squeeze bottles with the steel tips for icing and a dual chamber squeeze bottle with a leaf tip. What size is best for cupcakes? www.goldaskitchen.com Steve

That leaves out milk soaps if it has to gel. So if you are sf at 15% what is your water to lye ratio? So to counteract the harshness of so much co you up the sf and what is the last part of the equation? TIA Steve

Has anybody ever checked out this company in Australia? There are some good Youtube vids as well. The cake slices are just unreal and I sure would like to know how to make those suckers. There's a good vid of Sharon unmolding and cutting a cake. Anybody ever made one of these things? Share. Steve

I bought 100 12 inch long cdn18 wicks from Candle Cocoon. I use the 12 oz salsa jars and get 3 wicks out of each 12 inch wick. I had a bag of bases that needed using and this fit the bill. Really great wicks and a great deal (300 wicks for price of 100). Steve

Why not try 85% 6006 and 15% 415? You'll get a 50-50 soy/paraffin that should give you a great candle. IMHO Steve

I cpop my salt bars for that extra hard glassy look but my mold has hdpe dividers. I put them in the oven on lowest temp for an hour and then leave in the oven for a couple of hours. The excess moisture usually drains into the bottom of the mold but the bars are like rocks. You want to add your salt at medium trace or it will sink to the bottom and not incorporate throughout the bar. You have to be quick and not worry about trying a swirl or that sort of thing. I use about a 50/50 on oils to salt (30 oz oil and 30 oz of salt) but you can use less (some use about 70% salt to oils). I like to switch back and forth between salt bars and a luxury bar to keep my skin from getting to greasy (me in the bath that is). HTH Steve

Refined, bleached, deodorized palm oil Palm oil products are made using milling and refining processes: first using fractionation, with crystallization and separation processes to obtain solid (stearin), and liquid (olein) fractions. Then melting and degumming removes impurities. Then the oil is filtered and bleached. Next, physical refining removes smells and coloration, to produce refined bleached deodorized palm oil, or RBDPO, and free sheer fatty acids, which are used as an important raw material in the manufacture of soaps, washing powder and other hygiene and personal care products. RBDPO is the basic oil product sold on the world's commodity markets, although many companies fractionate it further into palm olein, for cooking oil or other products.[26] You got the good stuff and it often melts in hot weather during shipment. Most soapers order it during cooler times of the year and often buy it by co-op. That's a lot of palm oil, happy soaping. HTH Steve

Thank you, they are 5 oz bars.

I have an e-mail to her about the liners. They can't be silicone because they are too cheap ($8.10). Well yeah, if that turned out to be a pretty good mold, I'd tempt you with it but I know what you want for Christmas. I can see that it has a hinged front panel and it has rubber feet, looks solid and I like the two for price of one thing but you never know. My Kelsei won't last much longer because it is splitting around one of the screws; so I got to do something and I'm tired of soap sticking to the mold.

Anybody familiar with Dianna's Sugar Plum Sundries? They have a soap mold that looks pretty awesome. I wondered if anybody had seen it or knows anything about it. It's two molds in one for around $78.00. [/ATTACH]

The tomato red was really light but the orange is a deep dark apricot and the poop looks pretty nice cleaned up. Thanks for looking. Steve

Wow, you are one talented mod. The Polar Express is a mantra swirl? Your swirls are just great. Steve

That's exactly what I wanted! Yeah and it's election time too. I knew there was a better use for those blights on the environment. The corrugated plastic should make a tighter fit and would be easy to cut and fit. Thanks Stella. Has anyone seen the youtube where they broke off the ends of wooden skewers and taped them at intervals between a paper holder to make swirl patterns down and across the slab? Really cool and looks like it would be easy to make. Steve

I'm in the basement and have the day my business started written in pencil on the wall. Def want to get a mat to help with standing on concrete. I have a box fan that blows out the window and sucks out most of the fumes. The house can still get pretty stinky if I'm pouring something stout but my dw only makes choking sounds and opens windows upstairs, lol. Steve

CD18 for me too in the 12 oz salsa. The 16 oz jars take a 16 in my 70/30 blend (soy/paraffin).

Congratulations! Post some pics. Steve

I have a couple of cases of the 10 0z jars with the flat glass fitment tops. They fit real snug and are just sitting in my lab looking lonely. Steve

Thanks for the encouragement. I have some more ideas to try out next; just hope someone wants to buy some of these bars.

The foam held up just fine but some of them floated upwards. I really wanted that plastic board stuff for dividers but couldn't find it. Its a hassle but I like treating each bar like an individual work that can be manipulated any way you want. It kinda got my creative side thinking outside the box. The dividers provided just enough resistance to keep the soap colors somewhat separated for the swirl. It is a lot of work though.

I cut the two pieces of fun foam and stuck them together to form a barrier that was placed diagonally into my 9 bar kelsei. I poured the uncolored half of the batch (Lady Apple) on one side and then poured the red with peppermint and orange with ginger souffle' and a third was fragranced with pumpkin creme brulee. The brulee moved so fast that I should have swirled it first but instead looks like poop in the middle of the bar. This was such a learning curve and a fair amount of work but exciting to get a variety of soaps from one batch. Steve

Well, I just have to post this while it's fresh on my mind. I used a good slow recipe and mixed half with lady apple fo and no color, the other half of the batch I split into thirds and mixed TKB school days orange with ginger souffle, tkb tomato red with peppermint and pumpkin creme brulee with no color. I used a very thin trace and then it got crazy. You have to pour fast, pull out the fun foam and then do the round swirl before the stuff has a chance to get thick. I should have swirled the pumpkin first (I wanted a brown with the white) but swirled it last and it kinda looks like a pile of poop in the middle of the bar. The other two are not so bad and the crazy foam needed to be a tighter fit but it was ok. They smell so good! You get the whiff of apple (flickers) and then the other comes through (AH/RE) I sure hope they turn out ok. What fun! Steve

No gel on milk soaps. Those you might put in the freezer to slow the goatmilk down. I like a gel on some of my other soaps but most of my customers desire gm soaps. HTH Steve

ok, here is what I plan to do. Half my base will be uncolored (maybe some TD to whiten some more) and fragranced with mac apple. Mix up three different blends with the other half (like red with peppermint fo) and maybe use a vanilla based scent to discolor tan or brown against the white. Fall color combinations and have multiple soap combinations from one batch. I'm thinking that I could do Alabama and Auburn imbeds too. I promise to post some pics. Wish me luck. Steve

Wow, after looking at a fraction of your body of work; I'm flabbergasted and so impressed. You are a very creative and talented individual, not mention busy! Thank you for sharing. Steve

I try to charge $1.00 per ounce but lately its less than that. My problem with the larger containers is that the candles last for a longer period of time and sales slump in between the time customers need new ones. My 16 oz salsa burns forever and ever and the 12 oz just burns forever. Customers like the smaller candles for gift baskets and they tend to buy more of them to place in different areas of their homes. Whatever your costs are plus your labor but I just try to break even these days. It's just so hard to compete against a wally world 10 pound candle for $4.95 KWIM? By the way, people are always bringing me samples of popular candle and soap items as a way of giving me ideas for my own products; they mean well (I think). Steve