Wondering what to do with the chocolate leftover from your molding projects? Want to impress your significant other? Essentially a hot fudge sundae, but they will be impressed when you call it - La Dame blanche Try it today.

Although I don’t really follow the doings of big corporations too closely, I just saw a commercial on tv putting down candles in favor of some type of  air freshener scent pumping gadget. This brought to mind that this was the same air freshener company that jumped on the candle bandwagon several years ago - apparently without much long term success.

Their candles were not particularly good - I guess their market research didn’t turn up the fact that candles actually need to throw scent to sell well.

Perhaps their advertising would be more honest if they said “this gadget is better than the crappy, poorly scented candles we used to try to sell you”.

I suppose time will tell if folks will prefer a gizmo to pump out fragrance rather than the beauty and ambience of a burning scented candle - though I’m sure there will be at least a limited demand for it. I have serious doubts this product will take much of a market share and suspect that for all their market research budget, they still don’t have a clue.

Food For Thought - Do you need business insurance?

If you sell your crafted products the answer is probably yes. If you have any major assets the answer is definitely yes. In this day and age the concept of taking responsibilty for your own actions does not apply. While often you may look at a lawsuit and think that it is ridiculous, but any litigation involving you is a serious matter. I’m sure several corporations thought it absurd to be sued because their customer did something stupid with their products. You have heard about them - coffee was too hot, someone used their lawnmover to cut their shrubs, someone set themselves on fire while wearing their clothes, and so forth -  yet the plaintiffs won millions of dollars in these cases.

Cases like this often don’t come down to right or wrong or facts or common sense, but are decided by emotions. To be human is to have some degree of empathy for fellow humans and in such cases the injured person is typically sitting right in front of them for days or weeks. People dont show the same sympaty for businesses, and in fact a study I saw several years ago pointed out that much of the television programming we are watching reinforces the belief that businesses are evil (among other things). This starts at an early age - with cartoons aimed at children. Consider that for a second - we are conditioning our youngsters to hate businesses. Granted this is aimed mostly at big business, but can your child readily differentiate between a mega corporation and the store down the block?  I wish I could recall the name of the study as I would like to link it, but think about this next time you are watching tv.

The real nightmare of this for a small business owner is that the amount of these lawsuits is often way more than you could practically insure yourself for - not uncommonly hundreds of millions more. Fortunately most small businesses do not have enough assets to  make the expense of such litigation worth pursuing, although this does not make you immune altogether. If your business is not a corporation, then in most states you are personally liable and your non business assets are at risk in such a lawsuit.

Typically if you own anything big such as property or a house, incorporating your business will provide some personal protection in case your business gets sued. I highly recommend that at the very least you incorporate if you plan to sell your crafts. The rules on this vary from state to state so you should speak with an accountant and a lawyer on this to protect yourself.

Please comment or add your thoughts on this.

“Lotion, shampoo, hair-gel or food?

That is the question that plagues me on a daily basis as I enter my bathroom and get myself ready for the world. That is the question that I am obsessed with asking when I smell that which makes my stomach rumble. That is the question that fills my head as I smell my beloved coconut and my hunger takes hold.

Yet what I should be asking myself first, before jumping off the ingestion-bandwagon is… Is what I’m smelling lotion or shampoo or hair-gel or food?”

Excerpted from Lotion, shampoo, hair-gel or food? 

If you make scented products, this article will provide something to think about. Although food scents are very popular, not all people appreciate them so you may want to consider what percentage of your products smell like food.

I was relieved to find out  that it would take 16,516.5 chocolate kisses to kill me. Guess I’ll be ok as long as I don’t eat that last 1/2 of a kiss. I know you are dying to know how many of these and other favorite goodies your body can withstand in one sitting so hit the Death By Penguin Mints calculator to keep your goodie eating at safe levels.

While you are there you can find out how much coffee or soda you can safely drink with the Death By Caffeine calculator.

These and other great info can be found at Energy Fiend -  a blog devoted to caffeine.

Although I have been making chocolates for about 12 years, these were my first foray into writing projects and instructions for chocolate making. I tried to apply the same writing style I have used for so long on candle making articles. The Chocolate Making Instruction And Project Index contains all the links in a centralized spot.

General Instructions:

• Basic Mold Painting
• Basic Open Top Hollow Molding
• Basic Solid Assembly Molding
• Using Cookie Embed Chocolate Molds

Projects:

• Chocolate Carousel
• Teddy Bear Pour Box
• Bear With Heart Lolly
• I Love You Pour Box
• I Love Mom Lolly
• Leprechaun Cookie Embed Chocolate
• Easter bunny Cookie Embed Chocolate
• Solid Boxed Easter Bunny
• Hollow Easter Bunny
• Egg Scene Chocolate
• Hatching Chickie Chocolate
• Bunny Pretzel Lolly
• Easter Egg Pour Box
• Easter Basket Chocolate
• #1 Dad Boxed Card

More coming soon. I welcome your comments about these. Please let me know if there are any projects or instructions you would like to see.

Over my Christmas vacation I had a chance to republish two of my old soap making projects which were rewritten and modernized for use on One Stop Candle.

New Projects:

• Embedded Shamrock Soaps
• Easter Egg Soaps

These are updated versions of articles originally written for another web site which I was under contract to, but who shafted me after years of dedicated service - and shafted melt & pour soap makers throughout the world by removing these articles from their site. I will be rewriting many more articles from my archive in the coming months but it takes the better part of a day to complete each one. If there are any that you remember from the past which you would like to see again please post a comment and I will give them priority.

Over my Christmas vacation several of my old candle making articles were rewritten and modernized for use on One Stop Candle.

New Projects:

• Flower Pot Candles
• Cut ‘n Curl parts II, III, and IV
• Tie Dye Candles Type I
• Layered Candles
• Moon / Asteroid Candle

New Instructions:

• Over Dipping Candles

These are updated versions of articles originally written for another web site which I was under contract to, but who shafted me after years of dedicated service - and shafted candle makers throughout the world by removing these articles from their site. I will be rewriting many more articles from my archive in the coming months but it takes the better part of a day to complete each one. If there are any that you remember from the past which you would like to see again please post a comment and I will give them priority.

By popular demand, One Stop Candle is replacing those grainy black and white photos of the chocolate molds with nice clear photos of the finished product. All chocolate mold photos have been scheduled for replacement. We are making a chocolate in each mold and taking a close up photo, as well as adding the fill weight to the product descriptions.

This is a long term project since we can only replace approximately 20 - 25 photos a day because it is very time consuming. Since we have about 1,000 chocolate molds, this process will take months.

Once we have accumulated a bunch, the molds used for this will be given a thorough wasing and offered up in grab bags at 1/2 price. Check the specials for these on or about January 18 2006

I really like the way these are turning out, I just have to resist eating all the chocolates.

Welcome to The Fire Pit.

This is my first attempt at blogging and I hope you enjoy it.