if you are just getting into candle making you might quickly realize that you're going to have to do something that you never thought you might have to do when you decided to start making candles or at least maybe something you just flat out don't like doing and that is math personally i've always liked math it's always been my favorite but if it's not your favorite or you're just looking for a little bit of guidance when it comes to making candles and dealing with this candle math then i hope this video helps welcome to the channel my name is wade and i'm going to break today's video down into three simple lessons and a quick big shout out to skillshare for sponsoring today's video alright let's get into it alright so let's go ahead and get started and as you notice i titled this candle math lesson make it easy make it work and i did that for a reason i do want it to be easy we want it to be something that's repeatable and that's not taking a ton of brain power this should be something that you know it becomes like back of our hand second nature to us and so we want it to be simple but at the same time it also needs to be right we wanted to make it work not just for us now but if we were to scale up in production we want it to still be helpful and useful as we grow so let's start off with lesson one in lesson one we're going to talk about the difference between volume versus weight a lot of people think that this isn't really a huge deal you can really work with any measurement that you want and that is technically true however in candle making there is a few things to consider and that is what we're going to look at real briefly here in lesson one first of all let's start with volume with volume we are talking about fluid ounces milliliters gallons things like that so a lot of your materials might be sold in volume measurements for example some companies do sell their fragrance oils by fluid ounces like nature's garden for example but there are several others and they do that because in other hand crafts soap making making lotions and there are other hand crafts that do use a volume measurement quite frequently and as you see here i mentioned that it is common in hand crafting but it is a little less preferred when it comes to candle making so let's talk about that now as we evaluate the weight side so when we talk about weight we're talking about ounces grams pounds and that is the distinction between volume and weight now the one thing i want to point out real quickly is that a lot of people especially new candle makers will frequently confuse fluid ounces and ounces they are not the same thing fluid ounces is volume and ounces is weight most materials for candle making will already be packaged by weight which is an advantage of using weight from the get-go wax is going to arrive by weight you're going to purchase most of your other materials including fragrance oils and other additives by weight although there are exceptions to that as i previously mentioned but it's also the preferred way of measuring your materials when it comes to candlemaking and that is because most materials not only are packed for candlemaking but they are recommended for use by weight as well so a lot of candlemaking waxes will have a max fragrance load that they can hold for example many waxes can hold up to 10 percent of fragrance oil and that is by weight not by volume so you see a lot of candle making information and materials are all based around weight so it is the ideal unit and measurement to be using when you are making candles so you can see that that is why i give way to the green check mark it's not to say that you can't use volume but it is just recommended against and most making candles do use weight in this craft so now that we know that and going forward we're going to be thinking in terms of weight so i wanted to get that out of the way first that's really the foundation to this next lesson is knowing that we're working in weight so lesson two is about fragrance and wax and how much to use of each this is a very common question especially for new candle makers one that i get directly myself quite a bit but i also get this question a lot in comments here on the channel as well as on instagram posts and the facebook group as well and that is how much fragrance do i need to add to my wax how much total wax and fragrance do i need to make a candle how do i come up with those numbers anyway so even if i know how much i'm supposed to add what is the formula like what's the way i can do this myself so that's what we're going to talk about here in lesson two so there are two options when it comes to deciding how much fragrance to wax ratio you need to make your candle now we're not going to be talking about anything else that goes in your candles like dye and in your wicks or anything that that's a whole different topic this lesson is specific to how much fragrance and wax as you see here method one is just wax plus fragrance oil this is kind of your traditional method of figuring out how much fragrance oil to add to your wax and this method you know how much wax you're going to use and you use a formula to decide how much fragrance oil you can add to it so let's walk through this example step one would be to measure your wax for example let's say we want to use 16 ounces of wax so we will start off with that measurement step two is fragrance oil how much perfect soil do we want to use in our candles now again this could be a different topic on its own but most waxes will tell you how much fragrance oil you can use as i previously mentioned but you also as a candle maker can decide as long as you don't go above that max that the wax can hold what percentage of fragrance oil you want to use very common ranges are usually somewhere between six percent uh up to ten or even twelve percent however the most common is usually eight nine or ten percent these days so as an example i'm going to say we're going to use a nine percent fragrance oil load so you have to know that before we go into step three step three is now adding our fragrance oil formula to this mix so if we know we want 16 ounces of wax and we want a 9 fragrance load we just take 16 times 0.09 and that gives us 1.44 ounces of fragrance oil so we know how much wax and how much fragrance oil wax we need 16 ounces and fragrance oil we can use 1.44 ounces to have a 9 fragrance load that gives us a total amount of wax and fragrance a total fill of 17.44 ounces so an advantage of this method is it's very simple and it's obviously very accurate i mean it is math so it is going to be accurate and all we're simply doing in this method is we know how much wax we have how much oil can we add to it or do we want to add to it that's really the point of this method and as i be as i mentioned this is the typical approach that most candle makers will start with however there is a drawback and that is that it doesn't actually equal the correct candle size for you so you're the one that's saying i need this much wax or i have this much wax how much oil can i add to it but as you can see that gave you a total fill of 17.44 ounces well what if you're you don't need 17.44 ounces well then you have to do some additional math to kind of back that out what if you only need a 16 ounce candle well now you've got too much this method gets you right numbers but not necessarily the right numbers to make a candle the size that you're looking for so hopefully that makes sense and that is what's going to lead us into method number two and that is called the total fill method step one and total fill is determining the total amount that we actually need so i just left off talking about method one how that doesn't give you that so in this method we start with that information so if i know i need a 16 ounces total that is step one is determining the total amount we need step two then is to figure out again what our fragrance oil percentage is which we're going to use the same example here so we'll say nine percent and then step three is the wax formula in this case it's a little different so we're going to take 16 which is the total amount of the fill that we need divided by one plus the percentage of fragrance oil so 16 divided by 1.09 if that fragrance oil percentage was 8 percent it would be 16 divided by 1.08 7 percent 1.07 and so on that formula of 16 divided by 1.09 gives you 14.68 14.68 is the amount of wax in this case and then the formula to figure out the frequency oil is just subtraction you take your original total fill of 16 minus the 14.68 and you get 1.32 which is your fragrance oil so once again the wax amount would be 14.68 you could round to 14.7 and fragrance oil would be 1.32 and you could round that to 1.3 and as you noticed we are working in ounces in this example but it would be the same if you're working in grams or any other measurement what is the advantage of this method well it gives you the exact amount that you need to fill your candle if you have a container that you know will hold 16 ounces by weight like that's the size of the candle the finished product that you need then this formula is perfect because it helps you determine how much wax and how much fragrance all you need to get that complete fill amount and that is why this method is my preferred method this is also the method that most candle makers will eventually adapt over time especially as you scale and grow because it allows you to make the amount of fill for your specific batches exactly now i know method two might seem a little bit more daunting at first glance but remember back on method one the formula gave you a result that doesn't match the actual amount you need so you would either have to do additional math to backtrack it and tweak it and adjust it to get the amount you actually need or you end up with some waste so method 2 might seem a little bit more confusing but it's actually very simple and you get quite used to it and it's very repeatable and scalable so no matter if you're making one candle eight candles 100 candles this is a formula that will work for any batch size so it minimizes waste and it gives you the exact amount of fill that you need we'll go into another example here in just a minute and show you an example if you were to make a batch of candles rather than one single candle but first we're going to do a pop quiz so some of you that are very new to candle making might be confused on the two methods that we just looked at briefly and you might be thinking well if they're both 16 ounce candles why did we end up with different amounts of fragrance oil and so i wanted to touch on that i i think many of you probably completely understand this but i want to highlight it a little bit more just to make it very clear and also why i prefer one of these methods much more over the other let's take a quick look at both these methods again to remind ourselves what we're looking at the top line of these we both start with 16 ounces method one we started with 16 ounces of wax in method two we started with 16 ounces of fill so what exactly is the difference well in method one as i mentioned before we're actually working with a totally different size candle a totally different amount of finished product in method one we're actually dealing with 17.44 ounces of finished product whereas in method two we're actually only dealing with 16 ounces so the difference is how we started the formula is we started with the total finished product in method two versus in method one we just started with the wax and then we added the fragrance to it so hopefully this quick check makes a lot of sense but if not there's one more quick example that we're going to do now where we go into an actual batch of candles to help paint this picture a little more clearly so in this example we're going to imagine we're making eight candles each candle is a 10 ounce candle meaning total fill of 10 ounces per candle and we're going to assume a fragrance oil percentage of 10 so the total fill we need is 8 candles times 10 ounces each equals 80 ounces we need a total of 80 ounces of combination wax and fragrance oil so our wax formula in this case for this entire batch of candles is 80 divided by 1.10 and again 1.10 the 10 is the percentage of fragrance hole again if this was a 9 fragrance hole it would be 80 divided by 1.09 if it was 12 percent it would be 80 divided by 1.12 and that gives us 72.7 ounces of wax to make this batch of 8 candles which means our fragrance oil is 80 minus 72.7 which gives us 7.3 ounces of fragrance oil to make this batch of eight candles as you can see the 72.7 of wax and the 7.3 of ounces of fragrance hole add up to exactly 80 ounces of finished product and that 80 ounce is exactly what we needed to make eight 10 ounce candles as you can see this works for any batch size one candle multiple candles and there's no or minimal waste as we've talked about now one tip i would give you if you're curious at this point well how do i know how much wax or total finished product i need to begin with that's quite simple so my tip is to take your jar that you're going to make your candle in and just weigh it while it's empty then fill the jar with your wax you don't even have to make a finished candle it doesn't have to be a right candle that actually performs well just fill it with your wax weigh the filled jar then just subtract the difference that difference is the fill amount that is the total amount you need so if you weigh your empty jar and let's say your empty jar weighs 12 ounces and then you weigh the filled jar and it's 22 ounces well your fill jar minus your empty jar leaves you with 10 ounces and that is how much wax product finished product is actually in your candle now before we continue to the next lesson a big thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this portion of today's video skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of online classes and members a great place to learn new skills and get inspired whether that's candle making another craft or help with your business one of my least favorite things personally about running a candle business is managing the social media i just don't enjoy it all that much but i also just struggle with the time to do it so being able to make good looking content and post but also do in a timely manner is very important to me so i decided to take a course on skillshare about social media creation and i thought i would pair it with a software that i already use called canva so i am currently taking a skillshare class called social media content creation in canva from beginner to advanced by maggie sterra just scrolling through it i noticed tips on using canva for beginners which i'm fairly comfortable with but it also dives into specifically making social media content post with canva how to use canva for your business and it goes into a lot more detail and some advanced things that i don't currently utilize so i thought it might be helpful but there is so much more to tap into when it comes to skillshare i've taken many other classes skillshare is a great assortment of classes for handcrafters business classes marketing classes learning how to take better product photos create and run your website even productivity and self-growth they have something for everyone now skillshare is a tremendous deal anytime but the best part is right now you can have completely unvetted access to skillshare for one month completely free to try it see what you think take some classes and go from there i will have a link to skillshare in the description below and the first thousand people to click that link will get one month completely free trial of skillshare right now back to the video i hope so far in these first two lessons you've understand the importance of using weight when it comes to making candles but also the two different methods two different common methods that exist for how to measure the materials you need and why i strongly recommend method two total filled but we have one more lesson left and that is about labeling now i know what you're thinking what the heck does labeling have to do with math and why is it part of this video well that's what we're going to talk about now the reason we're talking about labeling is to discuss the difference between weight versus net weight what we're talking about here is labeling standards labeling practices for example when you sell a candle that is a 10 ounce candle that 10 ounce candle needs to be the finished product inside so think back to method 2 of how we were using the formula to come up with the total amount of fill that we need that's the amount that should be on your label or your packaging that's the amount we talk about when we're discussing net weight versus weight which is really just the total weight of your whole product the jar the lid everything put together net weight is your total weight minus the jar weight so it's what's inside your container and again as a refresher one simple tip to figure out what your net weight is is you weigh the empty jar then you weigh your finished or filled jar and then simply subtract the difference again the reason we're discussing this is that you want to use your net weight on your products and packaging not your total weight there are actually labeling guidelines that dictate what should be on a product and it's the net fill weight or net weight not the total weight at least here in the united states now this isn't exclusive to only candles you'll see other products on the shelf when you go to the grocery store that talk about net weight and that is the product weight inside the bag not including the packaging of the boxes or the jars that they come in as well so just keep that in mind when you are labeling your products and this is whether it's your product labels or maybe this one's on your packaging wherever you're listing your weight be sure to be listing your net weight not the total weight and then one final tip is to make sure you're listing that net weight in both ounces and grams an example is a net weight of nine ounces slash 255 grams this is just something that's pretty standard across most industries and you'll see this on most packaging and labels if you're visiting the store yourself the idea here is not to be complicated you want to keep it simple but you also want to do it right and i hope today's video helps you accomplish that and gives you some guidance if you have any specific questions feel free to let me know in the comments but i also encourage you to sign up for my resource newsletter for candlemakers we have been taking signups now for a couple of months but we haven't really started the newsletter yet or at least at the time of recording this video but content is going to be coming soon including a candle math cheat sheet that will take a lot of what we talked about today and put it on a cheat sheet for you so in the description below this video i will have a link to that newsletter but hope you guys enjoyed this video thanks for stopping by as always if you did enjoy it at all give this video a thumbs up and a like that really does help me and helps this channel if you're not already subscriber be sure to subscribe to the channel as well because we have a lot of other channel making and candle business content coming in the future as well as a lot more already posted once again thank you to skillshare for sponsoring today's video and don't forget to click the link in the description below to start your free trial the first thousand people to click that link will get skillshare completely free full access for one month thank you all for being here and i'll see you all next time you