Winter warmer candle

When I was a kid growing up in Sydney, Christmas of course was in the middle of Summer which meant Mum would literally sweat buckets over turkey just to give us the "traditional" family roast Christmas turkey dinner. Being as hot as about 40+ degrees Celsius, you normally wouldn't decorate with candles in the middle of fire season, and every window in the house akimbo, there wasn't much need for ambient scents either. Not to mention, this was long before the candle boom of the eighties.

Here in the UK, the seasonal weather provides the perfect outside ambiance for that idealistic Christmas. So there is a natural calling to fill ones home with scents that conjure cwytchy settings and women, especially go all out for all things Christmasy to build the momentum of festivities, usually overdose their homes with sweet'n spicy sickly scents.

I have been thinking about a winter warmer candle for sometime, but the market is filled with these sweet sickly scents usually incorporating dessert style flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and the sheer thought fills my head with dread and throbbing migraines! By the time you've filled every corner of your lounge with those sweet'n spicy candles and scoffed the half dozen mince pies, you've over-indulged and overloaded your senses to last you the rest of the year. Luckily it's only once a year!

I mentioned my thoughts on blending a winter warmer candle to a good friend of mine, Cathie, who is one of my best testers, and her reaction was clearly in my favour, "oh please, not cinnamon or nutmeg!" she protested, nose firmly to the gods.

Now seeing as I always like to bring the flavours of my routes into my home, I have been wanting to include Sandalwood. Unfortunately due to cost, I had to substitute the best Australian Sandalwood for a cheaper African version and with that, I have put my snobby nose aside even though it's not entirely my first choice, particularly noticeable in the early spicy top note, but still, the lingering base notes very much musky Sandalwood. Now it's within a sensible price range of my other candles, about £14.95,

I am really into the subtle sweetness of Sicilian Bergamot right now which forms the basis of the scent blended with some patouli, lime, palmarose and finally the dulset tones of Sandalwood gives the blend that exotic velvety spice, I know it, but can't put my finger on it, whisper.

No sickly sweet dessert style aromas within cwoffing distance!

Available shortly on my website, after I take some more photos.

My shop front

There are loads of NEW designs and scent blends available on Not On The High Street, and still loads more to come, click the pic above to enter the site. Alternatively all of Melinda Mulcahy's NEW handmade jewellery and aromatherapy candles will shortly be available on my own website www.handmadedesignerjewellery.biz
Exciting times!!

I've cracked it again!

Every day I think of new scents and improving my aromatherapy candles. In fact, it's been a scientific process that I have been working on improving for the last 2 years, believe it or not!

There are so many factors to consider when producing candles, especially essential oils candles, and not very much information can be acquired, so it's a process of research, testing and elimination. For instance, the wax burns a hole straight through the middle leaving a wall of wax that lines the glass which is wasted. The pool of molten wax is too hot hereby decreasing the burn time. Wax is too soft, wax has imperfections in the top (still working on that one), not enough scent throw (no worries here) and the list goes on and on.
In addition, I have decided to go down the healthy route (only covered by about 1-2% of the candle market), not just for my children's lungs and lounge walls but for the environment where the materials are sourced. For the ultimate scent throw (to fill a room) it's a process of finding the right blend of wax, as more often than not, cheap scented candle you get from Marks & Sparks and the like hardly fill a two man lift let alone a normal size room. The choice of wax also determines the optimal appearance of the candle (the velvet creamy organic kind) plus, to back up my healthy commitment, the materials must also meet organic requirements. For this reason I have NOT chosen palm oil based on the devastating effect logging is having to the eco-system in Indonesia. And who doesn't love Orangutans? Where most candles will advise they use "vegetable wax" almost certainly palm oil is used! My candles are made with only 2 ingredients, Soy and secret other wax that I have decided not to disclose (as it took a great deal of research to work it out) + a cotton wick.

Another factor, now that all the above has been refined and burning optimised, one must have ideas on unique scent blends and ultimately, based on the power of essential oils, have a concept for therapeutic benefits which requires knowledge of essential oils (my bedtime reading). You may not even be aware, that over 98-99% of candles on the market are made using "fragrance" and even when they boast "aromatherapy candles" they are actually only adding a tiny proportion of essential oil mixed with other oils and chemicals to produce the required scent, similar to parfume. I am curious as to how they can even advertise aromatherapy candles? Even Jo Malone uses the word "fragrance" and doesn't even advise what kind of wax used which suggests they use paraffin, i.e toxins (yuck)! Natural Magic candles use essential oils yet they advertise "vegetable" wax in their ingredients, so one must question the possibility of palm materials being used?

Now that I am confident enough to boast my pure aromatherapy candles have been perfected, along side my research and developments, I have been working on some new scents. So far I have produced:
1. RELAX with lavender, rose geranium & rosewood - cosy lounge, fire crackling and maybe the odd glass of vino.
2. INVIGORATE with ylang ylang, lemongrass & ginger - allow yourself to be swept away to exotic shores conjured in your mind!
3. REFRESH with rosemary, lavender & lime - the perfect detox without the rubber hose (you know where that goes).
4. ROMANCE with a secret blend starring Moroccan Rose - for starry eyed romcom gazing, chocolate nibbling moments.

I now have two more scent blends which I must say are gorgeous and include some other little essential oil touches I have decided to keep close to my chest:
5. PAMPER with angelica, chamomile and some other little secret wonders! The ultimate luxurious pampering experience.
6. REVITALISE predominately with eucalyptus, lime, bergamot - to catapult you back on track to being your usual amazing self!

Within 15-20 minutes the pool of wax has increased to almost full potential enabling greater scent throw to fill a room.

My candles work as powerful holistic treatments so each breath of essential oil unleashed into the air, with proven theraputic qualities, will help improve your mind, body, spirit!

Now that my beautiful candles are progressing nicely I can turn my efforts towards producing lovely handmade smellies including soap, salt rubs and bath bombs. Based on the first batch I made, friends almost snapped my hands off when they heard I was making soaps, which prompted me to develop this further. My aim is to create products predominately made with olive oil (due to a future project in Italy) beautifully scented with essential oils. So keep watch for these a little later in the year, when I'll be explaining why I am going down this route, if you haven't already guessed!