Hello to all my soap and candle loving friends. Today we chat about a rather touchy subject, to garnish or not to garnish your candles? Perhaps garnish isn't the correct choice of words but you get my point!
As mentioned on my socials, my husband is an avid Reddit enthusiast, a platform which he believes is the holy grail of information and gossip. Ok, that may or may not be slightly exaggerated, his opinion vs mine!
The other day he stumbled across a thread on Reddit about candles. Being he is married to a candle maker, made sense for him to take a deeper look into the thread. Most of the writers had documented about the unsafe practices that many candle makers do by adding botanicals to their candle tops, which could than ignite. Now, here is my take on the use of burnable things on your candles...common sense!
So, here's the thing, those super fancy candles topped with flowers and other flammable botanicals are in fact dangerous. As pretty as they are, like my husband said, people aren't going to know to remove them prior to burning. On Fosters Fields Soy Candles, you will rarely find botanical type stuff with the exception of my Lavender Vanilla Soy Candle which has a small amount of buds on top. These buds are along the very edge and will be submerged in wax once the candle is lit so there is no fear of lavender buds catching on fire.
Now here is the part we decided to test, I put a single cinnamon stick on my Xmas candles this year and so the experiment began. In all honestly, I tested the wax burn but the cute cinnamon stick was a last minute thought. I assured my husband that it would not be a problem but he wasn't convinced so we lit a candle. It wasn't a problem but after the cinnamon fell into the wax he was still curious if it would catch fire. He proceeded with caution...and a knife...to force the cinnamon stick into the flame and it did ignite after roughly 30 seconds. Now, will the cinnamon fall into the burning candle flame and remain there whilst not being held with a knife...likely not.
I had thought about adding a few pictures of other candlers botanical type works of art however I decided not to in case I offended anyone. You can easily find what is mentioned in this blog online with a simple search:)
There are many ways to make your Soy Candles beautiful on the tops and also keep them safe for your customers. A huge amount of flammable flowers and other dried botanicals is not the way to do that in my opinion!
And now I have rambled on far longer than I intended about candle garnish, see part 2 for the other half of this Reddit rant.
Please let me know what you think by commenting below. Or as always, check out my socials for all the new gossip on soaps, soy candles and the Foster clan!
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