What posesses otherwise respectable folks to damage your candles or soaps by pressing in a fingernail? I’ll wager that iIf you sell your candles or soaps you have been on the receiving end of this little zinger far more often than you would like.

What is the fingernail test?
Basically when someone presses their fingernail into your candle, ruining the appearance and typically for no apparent reason.

Who does this?
I have seen this behavior from folks in all walks of life, age, sex, economic status, and race. The most common culprits by far though, are well off, self involved, 40ish women who have no respect for anyone or anything. You know the kind - Im sure you have seen one sitting in her 40K + car berating a blind man with a cane or seeing eye dog because he dared to cross the street in front of her causing her to stop (delaying her for a whole 30 seconds).

Why?
I suspect that if I actually knew this it would open up the meaning of Life, The Universe, and Everything for me but I did on two separate occasions overhear one saying to another “is that wax” several minutes before discovering the fingernail damage on candles.

What can be done?
Sadly the reality is nothing can be done. If you prevent customers from handling and smelling your products, it will drastically reduce your sales - so just take your lumps and deal with it when it happens. If the candle is a solid color, just remelt and repour it. If it is a multicolor candle try making a closeout section and selling cosmetically challenged (damaged) candles for half price.

Two new candle making projects on the site.

Mud Candles shows a fun technique for making rustic / primitive style candles.

Stippled Candles shows a technique that looks like terry cloth.

Both articles were originally published in 1998 and have been modernized. They include links to the candle making supplies needed.

Our opening line of hard candy making supplies and molds is now available.

I will be working on some candy making projects and illustrated instructions soon.

What is there about complicated or difficult to decipher bounced email messages that are so attractive to email server administrators? Are they all techies that believe only fellow techies should send email?

I know the codes associated with bounced emails are well entrenched and see no reason to change them, but I find it hard to believe that none of this software enables sysadmins to actually configure the wording and layout of the bounce message to actually be meaningful easy to understand to non techies (and software tasked with deleting bounced email addresses as well. To quote an article on handling bounces “In fact, there are over one thousand seven hundred different formats recognized today by those who study email deliverability, and the number is increasing.”

Why can’t some kind of standards be set? And even if none are set, is there really any reason why the first line or 2 of the bounce message can’t say something like:

Error ### - User Mailbox over quota ( or whatever the delivery problem is)

Why do many bounce messages require you to scroll through multiple lines of header code to find out why it bounced? If sysadmins frown so badly on multiple bounced emails to their mail server, why do they make it so difficult to figure out who needs deletion from our mailings?

A pretty good explanation of what goes with bounced email can be found in Bounced Email? Deal With It! by Edward Grossman for those who want a better understanding in terms most of us can understand. 

I have recently spent a lot of time updating the scent oil pages to be less confusing and have lowered the prices of most of them due to some creative purchasing arrangements.

The new scent oil pages are organized by the letter they start with and prices for all six sizes of each scent can be seen at a glance. See Candle Scent Oils