The (RE) Making of a Flutter Dye Candle Dye
Posted by Lyschel Bersch on
I also formulated our candle dyes so that they would not leave reside in the wax. Or as little residue as possible. And in honor of the butterflies in which the Flutter Dyes are shaped Candle Cocoon gives a portion of it's profits every year to the Sand County Foundation to help them in their fights for land conservation.
It originally took us over a year to formulate the recipes and have the dye molds tooled. In the ten + years that we have been making the candle dyes we have not messed around with their formulation unless it was forced on us. We figured why mess with a good thing. When we have changed formulas it was due to changes in government regulations and developments in materials. We have always worked to provide the same uniform colors from batch to batch. We had pretty much succeeded in that effort until the last year when we noticed that some of the colors were shifting. We worked endlessly with our chemists to keep the colors. But lately the color shifts seem more intense. In an effort to get us back to our beautiful colors we are working on totally reformulating our recipes.
To make things more complicated the costs of our raw materials with our last supplier have more than quadrupled! And frankly we just can't absorb that cost anymore. So we have had to look for new raw material suppliers! And BOY are we happy! By working directly with the raw material suppliers in Europe we have been able to cut our costs back down AND provide a more tightly controlled product. Most European standards are tougher then those in the US for dyes. And since we always want the best and most healthy product we are happy to work together with our new source to make this happen!
You will notice our line changing as we run out of raw materials for our colors. Since it does take awhile to work up a new formula for each of the colors this should have gone seamlessly. Unfortunately we did not foresee some of the colors selling out quickly which left us without certain colors for a period of time. We GREATLY apologize for the irritation that this has caused some of our clients and we sincerely hope that our efforts to improve this wonderful product will be worth the wait!
We now have the formula worked out and are just tweaking the base (carrier) components. The votive to the right is paraffin using one new Brimstone Flutter Dye. The above pictures are 3 Brimstone per pound of wax.
Monarch (Orange) will be the next one! Our old Monarch seems to have gotten lighter over the past year. We are going to darken it up a tad. We have the testing done and just have to order the raw materials!!!
In addition to switching over all of the dyes there will be some color changes. Over the years the two purple colors that we have in stock have become more and more alike. We don't know why this happened because we have not changed anything. I am guessing there has been material shifts that we were not informed about. When we get to changing over the Amyethys Hairstreak and Wild Indigo Dusty Wing we will keep the darker blue-purple (WID) but add a darker red-purple with a new name.
The Karner Blue should remain the same but the rest of the colors may see some shifts. If it is a great shift we will re-name the candle dye. Also, we will no longer carry the Painted Lady and San Verdes Blue. In an effort to be more updated we will switch them out for a more true pink and a teal. But not to worry! We are also working on a color chart that will tell you how to mix and match the Flutter Dyes to create your old favorite colors as well as fun new choices! AND we are also thinking about doubling our line with various other colors. But first we have to get through this process.
Malachite (Green) is proving to be are biggest challenge. Apparently green is the most difficult color in candle making. It was actually the first color that we started testing. We have gone through so many green formulas it is making my head spin. Either the green is beautiful but it doesn't burn well because it is mostly pigment or the shade turns out to be more blue than green. The testing is ongoing are we hope against hope that we can find a wonderful green!
UPDATE 10/5/17--We have decided to change our main green color to something more contemporary and more of a real green! We will call it "Island Marble Green"
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| Left two are Island Marble (3 and 7 Flutter Dyes) Right two are Malachite (3 and 7 Flutter Dyes) |
OH! And keep an eye out for our new candle dyes called Snibbles. These dyes are very very concentrated so a little goes a long way. They are even MORE concentrated than our dye crystals. Snibbles will be great for candle makers that do larger batches at a time. You will need to use a micro scale to get consistent color. But if you just want to mess around with dye and save money they would also work.
So I hope you are as excited as I am about our new dyes! Can't wait to get them out to you! AND if you have yet please sign up on our Newsflash!! We will be offering freebies!
Best!
Lyschel
11/30/19 - Update Meadow Brown and San Bruno Brown are both gone. We are having issues replacing the San Bruno but we do have a wonderful Speckled Brown. We are currently working on the Karner Blue replacement.
We have a great color mixing chart.
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Part 2