Important Blog Posts

I bet you didn't know you're supposed to trim your wicks before each burn! I know this because every time I tell someone to do it they look at me like I'm crazy. I am crazy! I'm candle crazy! Here's why you should be trimming your wicks: Everytime you burn your candle and you don't trim your wick before hand, you may notice a few things about your candle: You may notice there's a little ball at the tip of the wick. This is called "mushrooming". You may notice soot being produced (the black icky stuff) You may notice your flame being too large You may notice your candle isn't lasting as long as it should All these things are fine and dandy if you don't care about the life of your candle. I'm not here to boss you around. BUT you already invested your money into a (hopefully) chemical free, soy wax candle. In order to get the most out of it you should be trimming your wicks!  Now you can go out and buy one of those fancy wick trimmers or you can use scissors. If you can't find those in the moment use your fingers! Hopefully you have those. All you have to do is remove the tip of your wick and then light it. Make sure to wash your hands afterwards though, that black substance can get messy. General rule of thumb is to always trim your wicks to ¼". You can go a tad smaller if needed. After you trim your wicks you should now notice: Less to no soot Smaller, safer flame Your candle lasts longer! Yay! If you're like, "what is soot"?  Soot is that black stuff you see in your candles. It's a black powdery substance that builds up around the glass and can even get onto your walls/appliances or anything else around your candle. When you are burning your candle, the wax is drawn up into the wick, which fuels the chemical reaction to keep the flame going. This chemical reaction involves the combustion of the carbon in the wax with the oxygen in the air to make carbon dioxide and water vapor, in the form of steam. Soot is the black smoke that is released into the air by your candle. This consists of unburned carbon atoms that are being released from an incomplete chemical reaction. These unburned carbon atoms are then carried into the air by the steam from the combustion reaction. There's many different reasons why your candle can be producing soot but here are some general rules to follow when you're buying candles: Make sure you're buying candles with cotton wicks! Other wicks that contain lead are a big producer of soot and you should stay away from those anyways. Stay away from candles that contain additives or too much fragrance (yes, there is such a thing). According to the National Candle Association (NCA), “the oils found in certain fragrances may slightly increase the small amount of soot produced by a candle, but wick length and flame disturbance are the primary factors that impact sooting in a properly-formulated candle.” Buy candles from trusted sources who know what they're doing! Making candles is not as easy as throwing a wick into a jar and pouring some wax in. There is a lot of testing involved that requires the correct knowledge to make a clean, well burning candle.  As always if you need help troubleshooting an issue with your candle, feel free to reach out to us with any questions you may have! Thanks for reading, go trim those wicks!

You bought your new candle and you're ready to light that baby up! First thing's first. If you purchased our candle, take a picture of it and tag us on your socials! We love to see our products out in the world being used by awesome people like you!    The first burn is the most important. Why? Because it sets the tone for the candle's life! I bet you never knew this...unless of course, you are a candle maker...and even then maybe you didn't know this. Hey, don't kick yourself yet, everyone has to learn from somewhere. You want your candle to last long and burn properly so make sure you light your candle for at least 3 hours (or until the wax liquifies to the edge of the glass). Have you ever heard that "wax has memory"? No? Okay, this means that if you burn your candle for the first time and blow it out after 20 minutes and the wax pool was a tiny little circle around your wick and theres unmelted wax surrounding the wax pool, your candle will only burn within that little wax pool every time you light it. Your candle remembers. SIDE NOTE: This little wax pool is called tunneling and it's ugly, a pain, and shortens your candles life by like, a lot. Kind of like a bad relationship. There are ways to fix this that I will go over in another post but for now, let's just avoid doing this okay?    Now there could be other reasons why your candle is tunneling that is not a fault of yours and this is usually something you can spot pretty quickly. If the wick in your candle is the incorrect size (too small) for the vessel your candle is in you will notice that your candle is tunneling. We suggest always reaching out to the company you bought your candle from to see what they can do. Hopefully you're only buying our products and if so, you will never have to worry about this because we do a lot of testing on our wicks before placing them in new vessels. With that being said, if one of our candles are tunneling then it's probably your fault. LOL, jk. Keep your candle away from drafts. I used to think if I left my candle in front of a window or something where there was a breeze that it would make my house smell nicer faster. Maybe this was just a me thing but if your flame is being pushed to one side of a candle it could cause your candle to burn unevenly because one side is getting more heat than the other. Drafts could also cause other light weight items to come in close contact to your candle and catch fire. I know what you're thinking, we think of everything! Okay quick recap: We're gonna light our candle for the first time and let it burn until the entire top of the candle turns into a wax pool! We are not going to leave our candle burning unattended and we are going to keep it away from flammable objects. (Yes, we have to say these things even though they're common sense.) We're gonna keep our candles away from drafts and other items because fire.  We're going to educate ourselves on candle safety and candle burning whenever Cierra posts a new blog. This step is optional but important if you want to be smart. And remember always, always, always trim your wicks before each burn after the first burn! I'll tell you why in the next post.