Tuesday, April 7, 2009

How to make Basket Testers at Home!!

To get started add enough water to a skillet to come just under the bottom of the lid of Party Testers. I did about 8 at a time. Heat at a low-medium temp. My stove temp goes from 1-10 and I had mine set to 4 the whole time. It took around 8 minutes to melt the PT about 75%. There's no need to melt all the way. Just enough so it is pourable. The bottom melts first so some times I used a tooth pick and carefully pushed down to still solid wax to bring the melted part to the top. I only had to do it a few times.


When they are melted enough remove from water bath and carefully open PT. I used a dish towel to help get a grip on jar. On some of my jars the plastic was really soft so again be careful when gripping and opening not to puncture or spill.


Here the wax is about 75% melted. All I did was slowly pour the wax into the Basket Tester containers. Depending on how fast you are working and how many you melted at a time, you might want to take the skillet off the burner and take one PT out at a time. Otherwise, take them all out and put your next set melting while you are pouring this set.


Be sure to have yourself completely organized before you start melting to wax. It goes much faster than you think! I was doing 2 sets today so I had all my containers in alphabetic order and separated for the two sets. I didn't want to have to go thru and separate the two sets when it was all done. When I was ready to pour I put both containers for each scent under each PT. Then I quickly (but carefully) poured each into the BT's.

I used the lid as a "catcher" for any spilled wax. Once the wax set enough I closed each one and put into the correct pile. By then the melted wax in the PT cooled off enough to replace the lid and put away.


Here's what I used to keep my two sets separated. Behind these you can see my BT's in alphabetic order. That made it easier to find when needed.

Total, it took about 2 hours to make these 2 sets. It wouldn't have been much longer for additional sets. I bought these plastic containers at http://www.samplecontainerstore.com/ They were a GREAT company to buy from! The size I got were the 1/9oz plastic containers. They included labels already printed with the Scentsy Logo on the front with the scent name and code. Also, on the bottom was my info (name, web address, email, and phone #) They will customize your order with your information. I bought the kit that included 240 containers (enough to make 3 sets of BT's) 480 custom labels (enough for top and bottom) for $47.99 if you include the code "scentsy" they gave an additional 5% off order. My shipping and handling was $8.95 which brought my total to $54.54 I got it within 3 days of ordering!!
I stacked 8 pennies to show how big these containers were. They were as round as a quarter (I didn't have any quarters to show that comparison)
The company also had a smaller size but I liked the bigger ones. They hold about 1/2 teaspoon-1 teaspoon of melted wax in them.
This was my first attempt at making my own BT. I've bought 2 sets perviously from Scentsy and love them, but I just can afford the $60 they cost. I think these came out looking very professional and much smaller to mail to my out of state customers. If you have any other suggestions please leave a comment for others to read. I'm a very visual person and while instructions are great, seeing what it's supposed to look like always helps me better!
Any questions please email me at: rebeccakern1@hotmail.com

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for putting this together! I am also a visual person and never attempted this because I couldn't picture. Great job!!!

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  2. Thanks for the pictures and the info. This does give a much better perspective on how to do these!!

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  3. Hi there! I just wanted to know if when mailing to other states,what exactly do you mail? How is a basket party done this way? BTW i'm new.Thank you
    Jazmine

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