Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Candle Day

Handmade containers for Bon Zai and Orcas candles

Bon Zai candles in the making
Today, I had a very special guest at the studio - Nikki from Gabriel's Aunt, who drove up for a candle-pouring session.

We made 4 scents - 2 are for now (Orcas, Bon Zai) and 2 will be only revealed in the fall.
Orcas is a limited edition candle, and is available only in the 8oz ceramic vessels handcrafted by Grace Lee of eikcam. They are hand painted with a blue glazed heart and are absolutely adorable!

Bon Zai is also available in 8oz with its own ceramic design of shiso leaf imprint. We also poured it in the travel tin size.

Bon Zai travel tins in the making

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Cream and Sugar Candle by Gabriel's Aunt

Burning Cream & Sugar brought me fond memories of late night stops at Blenz after a night out, and enjoying a cup of vanilla steamed milk - just to wind down before heading back home. I'd also take this warm comfort libation for walks by the seawall after work, to hold me over till dinner time while watching the little bit of sun just before it goes down for a lengthening night. More often then never, I'd also top it off with a sprinkle of cinnamon. And that's exactly how Cream & Sugar candle smells like!

I received a mini travel size (a mere 3oz will burn for 12-15 hours) as a holiday gift from Nikki and I'm again amazed by it's tenacity - filling the entire room with the comforting aroma of steamed milk. It's a small wonder!

Gabriel's Aunt beautiful, all-natural soywax candles are available from her online boutique and Etsy shop.

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Thursday, December 22, 2011

Happy Winter Solstice!

Winter Solstice

8hrs 6min 59sec of daylight in Vancouver today. And after that, the days will gradually increase - a few seconds at a time at first, gradually improving.

I'm celebrating with candles, eggnog and a winter solstice bath scented with refreshing yuzu to welcome the return of the sun after the longest night of the year (the eggnog knocked me down early so I didn't get around to it till the morning hehe).

Scented candle of the day: Hugs & Kisses by Gabriel's Aunt. Classic combination of cloves, cinnamon and orange with a bit of cardamom for a little exotic twist. Nothing like spices to warm you up on a cold winter day :-)

Happy Winter Solstice!

Eggnog

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Monday, December 06, 2010

Candle of the Day: Under the Tree


candy canes_heart_reworked, originally uploaded by 1_special_k.

Today I had a very special visitor at the studio: Nikki Sherritt of Gabriel's Aunt, who made a special delivery of my new travel-tin candles for the holidays!

And she came bearing gifts - not of frankincense and myrrh, but of lovely soywax candles that she recently created (which I will tell you about tomorrow), and her tried and true "Under the Tree" scent, which smells like candy cane-decorated Christmas tree. And like everything that Nikki does, it hardly smells cliche at all, and is loveable and diffuses the air nicely and gently with peppermint, pine, and woodsy warm notes of cinnamon and cedar. It's not nearly as tooth-achingly sweet or boring as it could have been. And I suspect it will chase out the pancake and latkes smells that have been really getting on my nerves recently, with my teenage daughter's relentless ventures into my kitchen ;-)

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Saturday, December 04, 2010

Candle of the Day: Bois d'Hiver


Bois d'hiver organique, originally uploaded by David Chantoiseau.

Today I was burning tealights of Bois d'Hiver at my table at Portobello West. It's been a while since I burnt it and doing so brought endless comments from passers by about how great the whole area around my table smelled (just from two tiny tealights).
Burning Bois d'Hiver for me is like visiting a place that is very familiar yet mysterious. Making that candle with Nikki of Gabriel's Aunt brought a dream of mine alive. And I just love it when it's that time of the year of cold, snow, storms and I can burn this candle and feel cozy at home while being reminded of forests, fireplaces, ancient temples and old-world pomanders.

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Thursday, December 02, 2010

Second Candle

Happy 2nd night of Hanukkah!
Today I was burning another Gabriel's Aunt soywax candles - Hugs n' Kisses. Spicy with cloves, cinnamon and orange and very much like what you'd expect a pomander or mulled wine to be - but with a twist thanks to a touch of cardamom. This candle is warming, a little woodsy and dry because of the high content of clove oil. It's nice that it's not overly sweet, but I somehow wish it was a little sweeter, with a note like honey. Perhaps it's just my current mood. It has a soft, gentle throw that you can only expect from a naturally scented candle.
For tomorrow, I need to find a candle that will clear out the scent of fried latkes from my home. Opening the window did not help much - the neighbours downstairs were barbqueing (!) of all things. Just when I thought that no one could surpass our stench of burnt oil...

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Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Hanukkah to you and yours!
May the holiday be filled with light, warmth and lovely latkes.

The next coming 8 days I'm going to try to mention (can't promise daily full blog posts during market season) scented candles that I enjoy. Today my place smells like Gabriel's Aunt Bohem. And not because the candle is lit, but because it was placed too close to the heater, and when I noticed that, I opened the travel tin to see just at what stage of melting it was... Pretty advanced, I discovered as I spilled a good portion of it on my carpet! That was a very silly idea of a curious mind...
But my living room smells like a pack of fresh tobacco awaiting rolling and it's very lovely even if a little naughty and not particularly Hanukkah-appropriate.
It's a beautiful candle and if you are into quirky, leathery tobacco scents you must try this. It rocks!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Burning Tobacco, Sans the Smoke


Un jour d'août au champs de tabac, originally uploaded by pfala.

Burning tobacco without the smoke is made possible via Bohem, Gabriel's Aunt scented soywax candle. While it isn't in the least smoky, it has the unique effect of tobacco absolute, smelling simultaneously fresh and deep, warm and woody. It's a rather simple candle yet smells sophisticated because of the unusual choice of notes: tabac blond absolute, patchouli, vetiver and davana, which adds a curiously fruity and herbaceous-freshness to the mix.

Bohem reminds me of a gypsy or a voodoo dance rather than a bohemian smoking den. The raw and unrefined qualities of the materials and the relative simplicity of their orchestration creates an unfamiliar experience that is curiously appealing.

But Bohem is not only a candle. It began as a perfume, and it is the first of Nikki Sherrit's candles to reflect her natural perfume collection. The perfume is more sophisticated, with the fruitiness of the davana even more pronounced. It plays on the contrast between that wine-like fruitiness and the dryness of tobacco, amplified with the other woody notes which later on evolve into a smooth, chocolatey tobacco dry down. Both the candle and the perfume represent the cured tobacco leaf rather than any tobacco product (i.e.: cigars, cigarettes or pipe tobacco); a choice that makes Bohem stand out in this genre. While there are leathery qualities, an inevitable aspect of the tobacco leaf, there is none of the smokiness or imposed sweetness that happens when you light a match to flavoured tobacco.

Notes: Vetiver, Virginia Cedarwood, Patchouli, Tobacco, Allspice, Cassie and Davana.

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Joyful Candle: Royal Couple

Tofino was stormy: rainy, misty, cloudy, wavy... One of the things that sweetened the nights when I stayed there was this beautiful travel candle, which is simply scented with only two notes: Indian jasmine and Bulgarian rose.

Rose is the queen and jasmine the king, and when they are together they really need nothing else! This candle was such a joy to burn, and even after extinguishing the flame, the cooled down wax scented the room with its sensual perfume. Rose and jasmine together are truly divine - and the name suits the candle to a tee. It's gentle as to not overwhelm the senses but tenacious enough to scent the entire room. Yet another winner from Gabriel's Aunt - and one of the newest scents in her Just for Fun collection. This scent is also offered in a bath-tea (the rose petals above, soaked in jasmine absolute), bath salts and a solid perfume.

Finding a candle of that quality, not to mention an all-natural scented floral candle, is a real treat: it's authentic and beautiful. The candle artists was generous with the amount of essences she uses, and picky about the quality, and it shows in every hour of burning this candle.

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Saturday, July 25, 2009

Lemon Bar


There is no mail delivery to my building for 3 weeks now, so you can imagine my delight when I went to the main post office yesterday to pick up the mail (usually there are only bills there) - and found out that two packages I was long expecting finally arrived and I was able to pick and unpack both on the same day.

One packages was from Gabriel's Aunt in Seattle, containing a new batch of White Potion candles as well as several of her candles that I was dying to try for quite some time*. Nikki is so talented with her candle ideas, it's only a matter of time for her to be discovered and considered the big name in natural home-fragrance. Her candles don't only smell great from their tin or jar, they smell great when they burn. Whoever told you that you can't make a naturally scented candle that has a throw or smell interesting simply don't know what they are doing.

Well, Nikki surely knows how to make a candle work without the aid of any aromachemicals or pre-blended candle fragrances that come from a cookie-cutter fragrance factroy. Her scent ideas are fun and original, and her candles burn clean and steady for hours and hours on end, releasing the unique aroma that was given to them before they were poured and moulded. It's so different to smell the real essences in a candle as opposed to an imitation of everyday olfactory pleasures. In Nikki's candles, when you smell chocolate, you know it came from a real cacao bean, and you can really feel that difference. There is a reason why I chose to work with her on my own candle collection, and the results are nothing short of stunning.

I alway check to see what's new at Garbriel's Aunt, as Nikki always manages to surprise with her Just For Fun candle collection. I was particularly eager to try her Lemon Bar scent. I love lemon pastries so much it's a mystery I don't ever wear lemony scents. I find these scents fun to smell as body care or home fragrance but become easily bored with them as a personal perfume. Just a couple of weeks I made a coconut-lime scent that although I liked very much, I thought would be better as a body oil than an acutal perfume (at least for me personally).

With essential oils of lemon, lime and butter CO2, I knew Lemon Bar candle will smell heavenly. And it does. It smells exactly like how my entire house smells like when I bake lemon-lime wafers, and the scorched butter and sugar take over the space and carry along the citrusy zest of lemon and lime. A particularly fun candle to burn in the summer, when baking is out of the question but you want to be in a cloud of lime zest. The butter, I find, adds an almost coconutty nuance, which could be just my own association, but nevertheless makes the candle feel a little tropical.

* I will tell you about the contents of the other package on Monday.

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Thursday, January 15, 2009

New: Roses et Chocolat Candle


Ayala Moriel is proud to introduce the 4th offering in our scented candle collection: Roses et Chocolat.

Capturing the essence of luxury and romance, Roses et Chocolat candle is everything Roses et Chocolat perfume was - for scenting your space with romance. To the soywax base we’ve added cocoa butter and scented it with cacao absolute, rose, nutmeg and more. The result - a gorgeous, voluptuous rose candle with undertones chocolate and spice. Like out other floral candle (White Potion), Roses et Chocolat is a soft and sweet candle that prefers small intimate spaces and will make any romantic evening complete from the dinner table to the boudoir...


Like all of our candles, Roses et Chocolat candle was created in joint collaboration with Nikki Sherritt of Garbriel’s Aunt, who lovingly hand-pours each candle to perfection. And of course it was her idea to add cocoa butter to the wax to create that creamy, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate texture to the candle’s overall fragrance.

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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Far East Candle


Far East Candle, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

This week clearly has the mark of tea - beginning with the High-Tea on Sunday and continuing on to today, where I am lighting Gabriel's Aunt new Far East Candle, scented with white tea, green tea and honey.

Just like a cup of green tea, this candle is subtle and gentle and probably "hard to get" at first. But once you get it - you're hooked to the serenity of a more neutral home scent that is not overpowering.

Note the candle's minimal packaging - label, candle cover (with instructions, printed on recycled paper embedded with wildflower seeds). You can further recycle the paper by burying it in soil and watching the wildflowers grow...

The glass container can be recycled as well - visit Gabriel's Aunt for ideas and tips as well as her recycling program.

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

ArbitRary Candle

Last night the first sample of my perfumed candle arrived. You can imagine my feeling opening the package and discovering in it something that I did not make and that smelled exactly like my perfume ArbitRary... I was ecstatic.

The candle was custom-made for me by the talented artisanal candle-maker Nikki Sherritt of Gabriel’s Aunt. Nikki and I have been working on adding all-natural perfumed candles to my line since the fall. The first candle we worked on was Bois d'Hiver for the winter. The candle is not quite ready and we both felt it was time to create a different candle. I have been fantasizing of an ArbitRary candle ever since I’ve smelled Nikki’s masterfully crafted perfumed candles (and her Summer Vacation in particular convinced me that ArbitRary would be gorgeous in a candle form). The results haven’t failed: the candle has a cold throw that is nearly identical to the perfume. It burns with its lovely, refreshing aroma, filling the room gently with its mélange of basil, lime, lemon verbena, oakmoss and hay.

Each 8oz candle burns for 50-60 hours and retails for $45. They are now available for ordering and will be in stock next week.

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Monday, November 12, 2007

Candle Making Workshop & Other Upcoming Workshops

THE ART OF PERFUMED CANDLEMAKING

Join our guest instructor Nikki Sheritt, an artisan candle maker of Seattle-based Gabriel's Aunt, for an afternoon of candle-making. You will learn how to make beautifully fragrant soy candles using essential oils and natural vegetable waxes. You'll be guided step-by-step in the process of blending the essences, moulding and crafting a high-quality, clean-burning candle. By the end of the class, you will take with you a specially scented candle, beautifully packaged and gift wrapped - ready to go under the tree!
Date: Sunday, November 18th, 1:00-3:00pm
How much: $45 including materials

AROMATIC COOKING with FRESH HERBS, SPICES & FLOWER ESSENCES

"We cook and complain that it's a waste of time, when we should be pouring our love into making that food" (Paulo Coelho, "The Witch of Portobello")

We'll learn the principles of preparing your own unique spice-mixtures, and using fresh herbs and floral essences in cooking and baking. We'll be cooking (and eating!) the following exciting dishes:

1. Druze Root & Spice Brew
2. Winter Salad with Fennel & Tarragon
3. Couscous from scratch, with a hearty and fragrant Morrocan Vegetbale Stew
4. Moroccan Mint Tea
5. And for dessert - a very unusual crème brulee which you will only know about once you've signed up for the class and ate it yourself ;)

When: Thursday, November 15th, 6:00-9:00pm
How much: $55 per person, including materials


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