Holly Berry Fragrance oil from Candle Science Review

HOLLY BERRY SCENT FROM CANDLE SCIENCE

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Okay, I love this scent, it's from Candle Science, it smells divine. A very Holiday orientated fragrance that is a common request from my customers around this time of year. I've used this fragrance in candles and it's been a hit.

This is my first time soaping with this fragrance. On Candle Science's web page it says that this fragrance is candle safe and bath and body safe. NO mention of reactions within soaps.

Yesterday I made my Holly Berry soap, I used my normal soaping formula, my oils and lye were at room temperature. I had my color's already set out and ready to go, as a just in case, since this is the first time I have used this fragrance oil in soapmaking. So I was prepared.

When I'm not sure how a fragrance oil is going to react with my soap I will add it to the oils before I even add the lye to the oils, that way if/when I start to see acceleration in the soap I can react and get it into the mold without issues. I started to see the soap accelerating on me, so I turned to pour the soap, now mind you this was a thin trace, by the time (in about 5-10 seconds) the soap started coming out in chunks into the mold. I had a little on the side and added colors to them one was a red mica he other was a green oxide, I QUICKLY put these into piping bags, and started piping leaves on top of the loaf, until I got half way down the loaf, and the soap was solid in the piping bag. now mind you piping a loafe of soap usually only takes me about a minute. I then grabbed the red mica for the berries on the leaves, and by this time the soap was starting to crumble coming out and seperating on me.

Now mind you I tried to 'work' with this soap, I got a little work that I was able to do on my loaf, and I wanted to show you that. However, as you can see in the picture the soap was crumbly and did not set up as normal.

Holly Berry Fragrance From Candle Science, in cold process soapmaking got a big boo from me. I was so frustrated with the sieze in my soap. After the soap was in the mold it heated up to about 130 degrees.

Holly Berry Fragrance Oil gets a big NO WAY when it comes to Cold Process Soaps from me. The fragrance is incredible, I love it! But this fragrance oil is not one I would use in Cold Process soaps, I will look to other fragrance oil suppliers for this fragrance! I do not recommend this fragrance oil, it accelerates, rices, and seperates.

Pink Sugar Fragrance Review & Comparison

PINK SUGAR FRAGRANCE BAR FROM CANDLE SCIENCE

PINK SUGAR FRAGRANCE OIL BAR SOAP FROM NATURES GARDEN

PINK SUGAR FRAGRANCE OIL FROM CANDLE SCIENCE

'PINK SUGAR' FRAGRANCE OIL!

We all know the tempting sweet scent of pink sugar, everyone want's it and being a soapmaker it's one of the hottest requests that I recieve. What your seeing above in the two pictures is the same fragrance by two seperate fragrance oil suppliers: Nature's Garden and Candle Science.

This review is about both of them and the possitive's and negatives of each one's fragrances.

Let's take on Candle Science first, this would be the cake soap. This first thing you will notice is that the cake soap is not dark in color. NO it's not! Pink Sugar did not accelerate my soap, giving me ample time to 'frost' my cake and also pipe the top, I did have a lot of time to fully decorate the cake soap. Now Candle Science does not give too much information on their fragrance oils other than it being safe to use in candle wax and body safe. I do like the way this turned out, I can still smell the pink sugar in it when I smell the cake slices. Mind you this cake was made back in June of 2011, I can still smell the fragrance in it and still no major discoloration, there was a slight cream coloring due to the vanilla in the fragrance oil but as you can tell it is workable. This cake soap was made WITHOUT the use of white stabilizers of any kind.

Now on to Nature's Garden Pink Sugar Fragrance oil, as you can tell this is the same favorite fragrance that I am used to, but when I used this one in my cold process soap it turned my soaps to a dark brown/chocolate color, now in the defence of Nature's Garden, on Nature's Garden website they do say that this fragrance will turn your cold process soap a dark chocolate color. This bar had originally had pretty pink swirls in it and I was expecting to see those pink swirls, however the fragrance had another idea in mind for my soap.

 Natures' Garden Pink Sugar Fragrance Oil did not accelerate my soap, I had plenty of work time with it, it just badly discolored my soap. Mind you these bars are about 6 weeks old, I still get a nice scent off of them and it's the same scent as Candle Science.

Being a soapmaker and soap purchaser, I like color, my eye is automatically attracted to a bright beautiful and colorful bar soap. I love the fragrance of Pink Sugar, I also get tons of requests for it. When I switched to the Nature's Garden fragrance oil, my bars took on a drastically different look to them, they were no longer colorful they were chocolate brown, I had to explain to my customers that I had purchased from a different supplier.

Regardless of supplier, both fragrances performed well in cold process soaps, both gave plenty of workable time, both gave good fragrance 'throw' in all 3 batches of cold process soaps.

The bottom line to this fragrance oil comparison is a personal one, they are both more than perfect fragrances and perform well in soap, it depends on what you'd like your finishd product to look like. I give both companies Nature's Garden and Candle Science 2 thumbs up for their Pink Sugar fragrance oil, but I have to say Candle Science gets' an extra vote in my book because of the aesthetic purpose.