First Post! Getting Started With My New Occupation

This summer I spent a month at home in Alaska, taking a break before school started up again. At a local gift shop I found a wildflower candle that smelled so good, but was over $30. Later I collected wildflowers, called fireweed to make jelly, and decided to try my hand at making a scented oil from it and then a scented candle. It failed. I tried another candle with essential oils and it was okay. I certainly learned that candle making is not so easy. 

So for my new occupation I am going to get serious about candle making and learn how to do it correctly. Hopefully I can make some fun scented candles for the coming fall and holiday seasons. 

I didn't make any candles this week, but I did start looking at some blogs to learn about candle making, and it was one of those things where the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. But I have acquired some soy wax and some cheap citrus scented fragrance oil. However, I read that these fragrance oils are bad for our health because of chemicals and such. But because I don't believe everything I have read one time on the internet, I am still going to do some test runs with the cheap stuff while I research more into it. Eventually I will buy some nice all natural stuff. 

I also decided to try my hand once again at making my own fragrance oil, but instead of wildflowers, I did an orange and a lemon oil. I have included photos of these as proof of my hard work. Basically the lemon and orange peels just chill out in some olive oil for a few weeks and I shake it every day, and eventually the scent is infused into the oil.

On a continuum of self-defined meaning to socially-defined meaning, the personal meaning of candle making may look differently for different people. The social or cultural meaning of candle making probably would be related to values of health and wellness, values of calm and relaxation, or romance, or scents and seasons. Individual meaning of candle making may look like someone who has a tradition of making candles with their mother. Or it may look like someone who chooses specific scents that remind them of a loved one. I probably fall closer to the socially-defined meaning, where candle-making is meaningful to me because of wellness and creativity.

My process of implementing this new occupation has involved mostly calculative thinking. There are a lot of logistics to consider, such as cost of ingredients and tools, the amount of time it will take, where I will store all of this in my apartment. Plus, based on what I have read, a good candle maker needs to be precise in their measuring and find the right balance of fragrance oil to wax, mixed at just the right temperature to have the strongest smell. This process still involves meditative thinking because it is a new experience and part of my story.

I expect that as I gain experience the process will become more meditative for me. Once I have solidified the logistics and have created essentially a recipe that works for me, then I can turn more to the experience of candle making and the creative aspects. I look forward to combining different scents and coming up with unique blends. I look forward to decorating candle jars and sharing my efforts with friends and family. I also look forward to sitting in my home enjoying the scents of my own candle. Of course the calculative thinking will return with each new scent I use, as I must experiment to find the right balance. Plus, if I end up being successful, then maybe I will attempt to sell some candles to cover the costs and maybe make a profit, which will provide a whole new set of logistics to figure out.