A wax melt, sometimes called a wax tart, is a way to scent your home without a flame. Wax melts are small portions of wax designed to be heated in a wax warmers. Wax melts can come in many formats including hard snap bars (looks likie a chocolate bar and you break a piece off), clamshells (like most of ours, you break a piece off), and molded pieces as well as soft formats that are scoopable from a jar or squeezable from a pouch.

Wax warmers are a basically a heat resistent dish, filled with scented wax, suspended above a heat source that melts the wax. There are two types of wax warners - traditional warmers are usually ceramic and use a tea light under the dish to melt the wax. There are also electric wax warmers that use a small incandescent bulb uner the dish to melt the wax. We recommend using a UL listed electric warmer with our melts.Note: A "wax warmer" is not the same as a "candle warmer." A wax warmer has its own dish that heats the wax. A candle warmer is a small hot plate that you set a wicked or wickless candle in a vessel on top of to melt the candle without a flame.

If the top looks bumpy and not smooth after burning or you see some white in the color, that is totally normal for soy wax. Natural soy wax is prone to polymophism - the wax is trying morph from its current state back into it's previos state. There's a fun name for it in the candle making community - frosting. Some customers and chandlers (fancy for candle maker) alike even prefer to see this and use it as an indication that the candle is made from soy wax. Don't worry, this does not affect the quality of the candle or burn.

Trim your wick! It is the single best thing you can do for your candle. Most folks dont know that you should trim your candle wick to approximately 1/4 inch before every burn for optimal performance.

Secondly, burn your candle long enough to get a full meltpool from edge to edge. This will take 2-4 hours for most candles, the goal being 1 hour of burn for every inch of vessel diameter if perfectly wicked.

Most candlexcepting some very larger ones, shouldn't burn longer than 4 hours because longer than that, you get diminishing returns. The fragrance that is released into the air actually comes from the meltpool (melted wax), not from the actual burning of the wax. The flame is just there to heat the wax so it can release fragrance into the air. The fragrance will hang in the air for some time after the candle is extiguished.

This is a long answer to a short question but TLDR, I want to support farmers.

At this time, all of our product are made with 100 percent soy wax. There are so many waxes to chose from when making candles, and all have their strengths and weaknesses. The popular waxes used for candle making are paraffin, soy, coconut, apricot, palm, and beeswax, as well as many blends of the aformentioned waxes.

When chosing a wax, I thought long and hard about which industry I wanted to ultimately support.

Paraffin is a byproduct of petrol production and supports the oil industry. There is no scientific evidence to support the rumor that paraffin releases toxic chemicals when burned or is in any way unsafe to use in candles. I decided that wasn't a good fit for my vision even though it is actually easier to work with.

So on to plant derived waxes! All plants used for candle wax are grown by farmers, right? I decided I wanted to support farmers! My grandprents on both sides were farmers. I worked at UF as a plant scientist for more than a decade before this and the USDA-ARS before that. Agriculture and farming is a big part of my identity... this felt right.

When chosing a plant derived wax, some considerations include where was it grown and was it grown in a way that is sustainable (i.e does not contribute to deforestation) and fairly compensates farmers for their labor (fair-trade).

Ultimately I chose soy wax which supports the soy industry and thus supports farmers of soybeans. The company I currently use, Golden Wax, sources most of its raw materials from areas that are grown sustainably and fair-trade, with approximately 40 percent certified. They have a goal of being 100 percent certified by 2025.

Soy wax is produce from soybean oil. The top three producers of soybeans are the USA, Brazil, China, India, and Argentina. My current wax supplier sources their soybean oil from all three of these producers.

My goal is to continue to bring that support even closer to home and find a soy wax company that sources their oil primarily if not exclusively from Midwestern Soybean farmers in the USA.

"Organic" is a term that has several very specific definitions. It is also a term that is heavily abused for marketing purposes and often used in an incorrect and/or misleading way.

If by organic, you mean "are your candles made from wax made from soybeans grown without pesticides?" No, they are not and neither are any other brands of candles. Organically produced portions of any plant industry, including soy, are very small, usually less than 10 percent. It takes a lot of oil to make wax and there simply is not enough organically produced plants to make organic candle wax. If there was, it would be super expensive compartively, just like at the grocery store.

Furthermore no wax producer makes this claim about their plant waxes, I have personally looked. I have only seen some candle companies claim this. If they are advertising themsleves as selling organic candles, they at best do not understand and at worst are purposely misleading you to pay a higher price.

Organic has another definition in science - it means it contains a carbon atom in the molecule. The chemical formula of soybean oil is C57H98O12. This translates to 57 carbon atoms, 98 hydrogen atoms, and 12 oxygen atoms combine to make a single molecule of soybean oil - it definitely contains carbon. Fun fact - all oils are made out of some number of these three molecules. Soybean wax is made by fully hydrogenating soybean oil; the carbon remains - so candle wax definitely contains carbon. So in terms of chemical composition, all soy wax - all wax - is organic because it contains carbon.

SO technically all candle wax is organic and no candle wax is organic, it just depends on what you mean by organic.

Don't be sold over-price candles marketed as "organic."