September 2001

Designed By Patti Smith www.biomax1.com

Fall is here bringing a sweet crispness to the air. Won't be long, as the days grow shorter and the evenings more chilly, that our kitchens will smell of spices, and hearts will be Merry. We are finding an increasing enthusiasm toward the decorative dessert candles selling as fast as we can make them.

Local restaurants are a wonderful market for your dessert gel candles. The best way they have to sell their dessert menu is to capture the eye of customers. Don't miss the sales you can make with your local restaurant managers. With all the wax fruits, ice creams, cakes, cinnabuns, brownies, cookies and candies using the candle gel for icings and syrups, you can duplicate just about ANY decadent dessert featured.

This month we tease you with our Southern Pecan Pie Candle made in a 5" pie tin. Remember that these candles need to burn on a fire-safe tile or other heat-resistant surface because the bottom metal aluminum could become hot after many hours of burning. Many customers will never burn these candles and keep them for decorative purposes, but we must always instruct our customers with the knowledge we have gained about the products we manufacture.

Our second feature this month is our Pineapple Upside Down Cake, which makes use of a dual wax base that we will explain later.

The pies are simple and fun to make and super popular right now. We used a 60's series wick in our 5-inch pie. Some people prefer to use three 50s wicks. It depends on the amount of light you want and the speed desired to burn the candle down. We 'seated' the wick on the bottom of the aluminum pie pan by dipping the wick into the melted gel and using our BET tool to tightly seat the wick against the pan. The gel is strong enough to hold the metal tab in place and the surrounding solidified gel will hold it in place.

The zinc-core wick will stand upright and erect, and you can snip off the extra height just above the top of the pie tin so that the wick does not become unwieldy as you work around it. Next we scented our gel, which was moderate-to-heavy dyed using our maple sugar liquid dye.

We poured this 'dark' gel just about an inch because we didn't want the metallic bottom of the pan to shine thru our pie. You can also sprinkle a few stearic flakes if you want a look that is a little more opaque.

Remember YOU are the artist; it is YOUR design. We used our Southern Pecan Pie fragrance for the authentic wonderful holiday scent.

Next we added a few un-melted chunks of gel around the wick because this will speed up your candle-making. less gel to melt and you are cooling down the hot liquid gel faster and speeding up the 'set' to your candle. Remember you are adding wax pieces of pecan halves and chips to the top of your pie, and you don't want the molten gel to melt them.

Next we continue to pour more liquid gel, colored to the degree we want our final pie top. The liquid colors are wonderful 'SHADING' colors. use a little you get pastels... the more you add, the deeper, more vibrant the color.

Maple sugar dye will produce a champagne color in the beginning going to a tea or cola color and all the way to a deep, rich chocolate or coffee color depending on volume of dye used. That is why we love the liquid colors, even though they can be very messy to use.

When the gel is almost to the top rim of the tin and is a cooler temperature, you are ready to 'install' the round crust. Just lay it in place on the tin rim. The wax crust by itself will look very naked and so we always 'slurp' the gel onto the crust to get that authentic, baked look .just like from our ovens.

Once the pie has cooled sufficiently and you can 'stir' the wick and see thickness in the gel, it is time to add your pecan halves, pieces and chips. Because you used chunks of un-melted gel underneath, the nuts should not sink, but make sure you have enough 'set' to the gel before doing this.

If the nuts start to sink, it is easy to pull them out, pull off the gel and re-add them a few minutes later. we pour just a bit of cool gel over top of the pecans to get the glazed nice look and 'full pie' appearance.

Place your pie on a glass plate to add to the beauty. and you will surely have the attention of your guests and customers. Our SECOND feature this month is another mouth-watering goodie: Pineapple-upside-down cake. Many people use all types of baking molds and tarts these days. People love shapes. So why not buy one wax 'cake' and get lots of uses from it?

So we used the strawberry shortcake piece. Use it right side up; add wax strawberries, red gel, whipped white paraffin for whipping cream, and you have wonderful strawberry shortcake. However we wanted more of a fall dessert this month.

So. we flipped the shortcake piece over and threaded the wick thru the whole in the center.

Next we took our pineapple chunks and very easily cut them into smaller pieces, using a sharp paring knife, to create 'crushed' pineapple.

We arranged the pieces over the wax cake.

Next we had golden gel scented with our Pineapple Upside Down Cake fragrance, which is a yummy you will love.

We allowed the gel to get cool because we want it to cover the pineapple and barely dribble over the edge of the dessert... a little onto the plate just like our REAL 'calorie-filled' edible dessert would do.

Remember authenticity is what will sell your candles. We put several heaping tablespoons of the golden gel all over the pineapple pieces.

We cut a couple cherries in half. remember we want to stretch our wax pieces to make as many candles as possible to keep raw costs down, yet still create a beautiful piece of artwork.

We added the cherries and poured just a bit more gel to add the 'glaze' over the cherries. Make sure it isn't HOT gel.

We selected a beautiful red floral foil to line our glass dessert plate. This really makes the presentation festive. customers love the glitz of the holidays, and something as easy as this can be just the added touch to make your candles unique and sought after.

There you have it. we tried to describe many details for you, but you can easily create both these candles in less than 30 minutes.

So Enjoy. have fun.. and we will see you next month with more unique and creative ways to keep your candle making spirits soaring high!

Snuggle and keep warm.with the light from your handcrafted candles. made with love and fingers.



October 2001 America Unites Together…. And Watches Light from Shore to Shore … and receives support from around the whole World …



Not one heart has gone untouched during the past month. We have witnessed such a joining of hearts which most of us had never seen before. Now is a time for healing. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is unknown…. So we live for our Todays ……with a little different importance and meaning.

During this past month I have witnessed candlemakers from around the country heating their melting pots, pouring candles and warming hearts. We have poured Donations by the hundreds of dollars into the various causes from our candle sales… and we have filled many thousands of American homes with heartfelt remembrances thru the lighting of candles. My personal email box has been flooded with words of support and encouragement from every continent of the World. This speaks a Voice; our work and effort indicates our Stand.

So this month our Article is two-fold -- first, the most simple of Unity Candles… for those who are newer and also for those needing to produce quantity. Our second -- is to show continued prosperity and direction, for we are not a people who will ever relinquish. So we continue on in our learning… and our second candle this month is the Wax Candy-Jar Candle….safety being our issue and with a relaxed, light-hearted attitude.

So Let’s Begin…. UNITY CANDLES …. The Red, White and Blue theme has found a whole new popularity in the candle industry. From our picture you can see how simply Unity Candles can be created. Have some red, white and blue gel on hand, pre-colored. For those who are new, ‘white’ gel can be created with several techniques…. using a white color block, adding stearic flakes, or by adding sprinkles of our whitening powder - remember a little goes a long way. You don't want to overuse the white powder pigments or they will clog the wick; they are strong and quickly get the gel to an opaque bright white (also used for milk and cookie candles). And of course some blue gel. Add some red, white, blue metallic stars, gold stars, red hearts and you have everything you need. Use a variety of shapes and sizes of glassware.

Seat the wick by dipping the tab into some melted gel and use your BET embedding tool to push the wick tab tight to the bottom of the glass and snip the height of the zinc-core wick just above the top of the glass. Next drop 'chunks' of unmelted red, white and blue AROUND* the wick, and sprinkle with glitters of your choice. Then overpour your color chunks with clear melted, scented gel. Finish off by a sparse sprinkling of glitter on the top of the candle. (* keep chunk piece slightly away from the wick so their weight will not bend the wick when you overpour.)

This will produce gorgeous bright Red, White and Blue candles which will be a favorite of your customers. A sprinkling of fine gold glitter on the chunks also gives a great look. You can add some patriotic foil garlands to decorate the outside of the glassware if you choose. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Candy Jar Candles

Our second theme this month focuses on Candle Safety. Sugar products can flame in gel candles and are unsafe. Therefore, we designed a whole new line of wax cookies and candies to fulfill the popularity of the Cookie and Candy Jar Candles that will be popular for the holidays. We have candy canes, Christmas trees, chocolate chip and a teddy-graham 'type' cookie… along with chocolate kisses, starlight mints, candy corn, and a Christmas red/green mint candy.

Remember the key to successfully embedding of wax pieces is to allow the gel to COOL before embedding. This takes some patience and some practice. Pour the gel at cooler temperature to lessen the wait and remember.. you only need to create a wall of the wax pieces up close to the glass so that the interior cylinder of the candle is pure gel to keep your long burn-time that customers love. This technique will also keep your candle burning 'more neat', and keep the original appearance attractive after many burning hours.

We used coordinating fragrances to go with the candies… i.e. Chocolate Fudge for the kisses, Candy Cane for the mints, and Candy Corn for the Halloween candy corn jar. We used clear, scented gel and filled the container about 3/4 full to allow for the displacement of the added wax candies. When the gel has started to 'set' and you can comfortably put your finger down into the gel, it is time to embed wax pieces. We also used our BET embedding tool to help push the pieces all the way to the bottom of the glass. Just 'jigsaw' the pieces around the Glass wall to get the look you desire. Then snip the wick to 1/4" and you are done….with a candle that customers will love.

We hope you enjoy both of these candle ideas…. And that you will continue to share your talents, which is a bit of 'yourself'….. as you spread light and warmth and love. Together we Stand… together we Comfort, and together we are Strong. Also don't miss the new 'Prayer Incense Bottle' instruction on our Miscellaneous Embed Page. You can make it in about 5 minutes from materials you have around the house.



November 2001
Three Candles Ideas….
Preparing for the Holiday Season
By Patti Smith
www.biomax1.com

As the gel candles become more and more popular, we are finding increasing ways to use our creative minds and inventive ideas. This keeps the art fun and your sales ever increasing.

In this edition, we feature three candle ideas perfect for the Fall and Holiday Season, with differing levels of skill necessary. Our first candle is our Gourmet Apple Butter Candle—just as simple as you can get yet totally irresistible in its festive packaging. Our second candle idea is our Holiday Romance Candle featuring new glass embeds. Our third, being our free-style Dutch Crumb Topping Cobbler, which could also be enhanced as a Crumb Topping Nut or Banana Bread with just a couple small changes. This tin size gives you a whole new variety of candles with a rectangle shape in addition to the round pies. In addition, a change to the fragrance and the type of fruit, you significantly change the ‘favor’ of the candle, allowing you to use up left-over odds and ends in wax pieces and increase the variety of candles that you carry… all with minimal investment.

So let’s get started… we have LOTS to get done before Christmas! Your candle-buying public AWAITS you!!

GOURMET APPLE BUTTER:

This candle is simple as can be yet novel, cute and great for the Season. We took a typical canning jar, added to the gel some maple sugar dye and just a couple sprinkles of gel whitening powder to cause translucence instead of transparency. We used our fabulous Apple Butter fragrance. Melt and pour and you are DONE except for ‘packaging’ of course. We have all learned significantly with the onslaught of the pie sales that using the little window boxes increase your sales….. customers love packaging. We used a cotton apple fabric for the topper and tied raffia around the screw canning lid, in a bow. Final winning touch is to use your B.E.T. (BioMax embedding tool..very sharp!!) to push a hole in a couple of wax apple slices and tie them onto the ends of the raffia.

There you have it.. made in 15 minutes and cute as can be. Of course you can add more peach color dye to make peach butter and always, always the favorite red strawberry jam. Lots of ideas…just waiting for you. Adding the pieces of wax fruit to the outside of the jar, tells the Fragrance and adds the fun look.

HOLIDAY ROMANCE:

Our second candle Idea for this edition is the Holiday Romance candle featuring our glass Loving Couple embed. This will be very popular for Christmas and continuing thru Valentine’s Day. We poured black sand in the bottom of the glassware then sprinkled some gold glitter and red foil hearts. Then placed lots of gel chunks all around the wick about 2/3’s way up to the top of the glass. [NOTE: Gel Chunks are great to (1) give you great bubbles, (2) hold glitters and foil shapes suspended, (3) they act to cool down the melted over-pour gel which helps when embedding wax pieces, (4) and helps to hold glass embeds in place while the gel is setting up.. If you haven’t used gel chunks in your candles, by all means give it a try..you will become a believer!! You save time also because you don’t have to wait for so much gel to melt. But the LOOK is the winner…]

Next we sprinkled more gold glitter and red foil hearts on the Gel pieces and over-poured clear gel scented with Winter Memories FO. Because we had chunks of gel, we could insert our glass Loving Couple embed and use our embedding tool (B.E.T.) to get it exactly positioned where we wanted it for good eye appeal. Then we used our tool further to scoot some of the red foil hearts right up to the glass to form around the embed for accent.

Again.. simple as can be and the gold, black and red are very nice together.

FREE-STYLE DUTCH CRUMB TOPPING COBBLER

Next we have a real treat for you. As you can see from the picture, this is definitely a top-selling candle, and not as difficult as you might think. This concept is our newest idea, and this article is our first presentation of the design idea.

We are using a new little rectangular dessert tin—giving you another option from the ‘round’ pies. These tins also fit in the plastic folding containers as well as the little window pie boxes that are selling so well—also keeping those poking fingers off your candles before sale!! Remember to burn these foil container candles on a small dessert plate for safety!! And also remember we use absolutely NO FOOD ITEMS in any of our gel candles. Sugar is flammable and unsafe in the gel.

To avoid having the bottom of the tin showing thru once the topping has burned away, we always like to pour a thin layer of deep maple sugar colored gel in the bottom of the pans. If you start melting the gel, add the dye, and pour your ‘bottoms’ first.. the concentrated colored gel is there ready for you and as the rest of the gel melts, you have the more pale colors you want for the rest of the candle.

Our candle is Apple… using 3 ‘cooked apple’ (white) slices and our Apple and Streusel fragrances. Again, we stack those chunks of unmelted gel in the tin. You can use 1- 60s wick or 2- 50s, since this shape is rectangular, depending on how fast you want it to burn and how much light you want. Then we overpoured tan colored gel about 2/3 full.

Now for the fun as we get a little ‘original’. We wanted a few pieces of ‘dough’ sticking up, but we didn’t want a ‘formed crust’ for this particular look. We took some left over wax crust pieces we had and layed them under the halogen light to get them to soften slightly. [NOTE: You can buy jelly wax from the grocery store, tint lightly with maple sugar dye, and pour it out flat and cut in random pieces, rounding off the sharp edges…think of forming pieces of ‘pie dough’ with the wax.. similar to our play dough days :o) ]. We placed 2-3 of these on top of the gel and layed our white cooked apples between the dough pieces.. it will look a little strange until you pour a thin layer of gel over it and sprinkle with wax ‘crumb topping’, which is grated wax, scented with Apple Butter and Cinnamon Fragrance.

And THERE you have it… the perfect cobbler… created entirely with your own hands. I guarantee when you finish, you will be craving dessert!!! And with the smell of the apple-ly cinnamon scents.. your family will be very disappointed, thinking you have been baking all afternoon… Of course if you have loads of energy and plan well.. do BOTH, candles AND baking an apple crisp—or cheat and run to the bakery!! :o)….. You will have a beautiful candle centerpiece to light while the family enjoys your fabulous dessert in real FOOD form!!!

Home times are happy times.... shared with those you love.

Enjoy and have fun. And keep an eye out.. we will shortly be showing our new Belgian Waffle complete with strawberries and whip cream, and also a Chocolate Kiss Cake and Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake*.

* Remember there are never any edible ingredients in our dessert candles. All references are referring to wax candle supplies.






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