Nest Spring Fest Candle Giveaway

We're giving away one Nest Peony candle a day from April 25th to May 8th as we count down to Mother's Day. 14 chances to win!

Below are the various ways you can earn raffle entries:

• Post on our Facebook page "I'm here for Nest Spring Fest" for 1 raffle entry.
  


• Earn a raffle entry everytime you have a new friend join our Facebook page and post "[yourname] sent me for Nest Spring Fest". Your friend will also earn a raffle entry. This entry is only valid when you have someone new join our page.
  


• Request a scent sample of Nest Peony Blanche by sending your mailing address to SniffIt@CandlesOffMain.com. When you receive your sample, post your feedback on our Facebook page for 1 raffle entry.
  


• Earn 1 raffle entry for every in-store or on-line Nest Fragrances purchase between 4/19/11 and 5/7/11.
  


• Earn 1 raffle entry for every Nest Fragrances review you post on our website between 4/19/11 and 5/7/11.

We'll draw a random raffle entry each day starting Monday, April 25th and announce the winner on Facebook, Twitter and our website. You have 30 days to claim your prize by sending an email to YeahMe@CandlesOffMain.com. Each winner will receive a Nest Peony Blanche candle (retail value $32). If you live outside the Annapolis, Maryland area, we'll ship the candle to any continental US address. Good luck!

Mother's Day Gift Ideas

Mother's Day is coming up on May 8th, so we thought we'd help out with some great gift ideas for Moms.

Voluspa candles are always a hit and the Maison Gift Sets are a great way to offer a variety of fragrances if you're not sure what your Mom likes. The Voluspa Maison Blanc Gift Set offers 1 votive in each of the 8 fragrances in the Maison Blanc Collection. This gift set includes some of Voluspa's best selling fragrances such as Saijo Persimmon and Laguna. I love the white box gilded with gold and the votive candles are poured in cosmetic jars with a screw top lid making them perfect for travel or trial. $50 per gift set.

Juilette Has a Gun offers wonderful perfumes for women. Miss Charming is a sweet fruity floral perfume perfect for daytime or the light-hearted, playful Mom. This perfume is a blend of Moroccan rose, musk and wild berries. Lady Vengeance is more rich and sensual and perfect for nighttime or for more daring Moms with a blend of Bulgarian rose, patchouli and vanilla. $110 each.

Lafco candles make a gorgeous gift with their keepsake hand-blown glass vessel. I love the bright pink container for the Lafco Powder Room candle. The Duchess Peony fragrance is perfect for the girl in every Mom. These oversized candles last 100 hours. $50

Beau Bain bath bombs always make great gifts for women as they leave your skin silky smooth and your body feeling like butter. Beau Bain bath bombs are available in individual large size, 6-packs and 12-packs of mini bombs. Prices range from $8 - $30.

The packaging on the Tocca perfume is absolutely divine and uber-girly yet ultra stylish. Tocca Bianca is a delicate blend of tea, rose, lemon and sugar and perfect this time of year when buds are just starting to open and steamy days are on the way. Tocca eau de parfum is $68 (price increase to $72 soon). The solid perfume retails for $30 and is perfect for travel or for your Mom to toss in her purse for use during the day.

Anthousa diffusers are great if you want to give the gift of home fragrance without giving a candle. Diffusers provide a constant fragrance and add beauty to any room. The gift sets by Anthousa offer 3 mini diffusers that are perfect for powder rooms or smaller bedrooms. The Garden Collection offers 100ml diffusers in Bougainvillea 1768, Pomegranate & Mint and White Gardenia.

What's your favorite gift for Mother's Day to give or to receive?

Votivo Rush of Rose & Morning Violet

Earlier this year Votivo launched two new fragrances: Rush of Rose and Morning Violet. Both fragrances are fun and very feminine. While they each have a strong focus on a single note, they each use other fragrances to help them achieve their mission.

Rush of Rose is an explosion of fresh, green Damascus rose buds, surrounded by light, watery notes and soft woods.

Rush of Rose is a perfect name for this fragrance. It is exactly that. Like your face being jammed into a bouquet of roses. The brilliance of this fragrance is that Votivo used ozone and aldehydes to keep the fragrances light and fresh. Many rose fragrances can get powdery and smell like Grandma's bathroom. Not what most people are looking for. This rose is full-on rose without being old.

• Top notes: Water greens, light ozone, clean aldehydes
• Middle notes: Moroccan rose, damask rose, may rose
• Base notes: sweet floral musk, soft woods

Morning Violet is a refreshing breath of life concocted of sweet pears, Parma violets and guaiacum wood.

Violet fragrances can get very heavy and sweet. Votivo mixed Parma and Victoria violet with greens and fresh pear to lighten it up and make it a little juicier while still staying true to the violet fragrance.

• Top notes: leafy greens, fresh pear
• Middle notes: Parma violet, Victoria violet, powdered Iris
• Base notes: amber, musk, guaiacwood

Votivo candles last approximately 50 hours and are made with a soy wax blend and cotton wick.

Peony Fragrances

Peony is a wonderful and feminine flower that is dearly loved. The flower features delicate petals in grand abundance.

Peony Blanche by Nest Fragrances is the most recent launch. This fragrance blends peony with jasmine magnolia and lily with watery nuances. The effect is a soft floral that is strong in fragrance. This candle features beautiful petal pink wax and gorgeous packaging.

Red Flower scanned the world to find the most distinct fragrance from each area and selected Peony from Japan. Red Flower Japanese Peony is fragrance is powdery and natural. The large candle comes with peony petals on top that you need to remove before your burn the candle. The candle liquifies as it burns for a beautiful, glowing effect. The large candle lasts 50 hours and the tiny candle lasts an astonishing 15 hours. Both candles are highly fragrant.

K. Hall Designs makes the most natural blend focusing on single note fragrances. The K. Hall Peony candle smells like soft, velvety floral petals reminiscent of rose petals. K. Hall Designs Peony is also available in a diffuser and diffuser refill.

Lafco makes the most stunning hand-blown vessels for their candles that will become a keepsake for generations to come. Their Powder Room, Duchess Peony, candle comes in the most exquisite pink glass container. This large candle lasts and astounding 100 hours.

Trapp Private Gardens launched their Pure Peony candle earlier this year. Trapp Pure Peony is a very water, floral blend focusing on the vintage peony fragrance. This fragrance is available in a 5 and 7oz candles as well as a votive candle.

It's nice to have so many peony candles for selection to be able to find just the right one for you. Which one is your favorite?

Vivacious Violet

Guest post by Caitlin Feener

Something that is considered vivid can be full of life, strikingly bright or intense, and might even produce powerful feelings and clear images in the mind. Violet is vivid—a fragrance that can have a fantastic effect on the senses.

An extraordinarily versatile scent, violet is deep, complex, and enticing. It blends seamlessly with so many other notes, from fruity to spicy, and each combination discovers and exposes violet in a whole new way. No two violet blends that I have come across have mirrored one another, yet at the same time, violet is always the star of the show in its own unique way.

Votivo Morning Violet. Full of Life.

Morning Violet is a refreshing breeze on a carefree warm day, the crisp beautiful memories of pure violet floating in the wind while you run through fresh green grass and breathe in the sweet scents of summer all around you. Parma and Victoria violet are enhanced with notes of sweet pears, leafy greens, and powdered iris, and are rounded out with the flawless exotic touch of amber and guaiacwood. Morning Violet captures the essence of feeling alive—a calm reminder to pause every now and then and make sure to smell the flowers.

Anthousa Violet & Black Currant. Strikingly Bright and Intense.
Elegant Violet & Black Currant is like nectar, juicy enough to turn even the coldest day into a seductively sweet soiree. Spend the evening with Violet & Black Currant and embrace your inner goddess, sipping fragrant dessert wine while marveling at the stars in the bold black sky. A fruity floral blend of red rasberry, Valencia orange, tart black currant, fresh Macintosh apples, and peach nectar meet the bright floral notes of pink jasmine, red geranium, and purple violet to create an intense feeling of sugary sweet clarity.

Odin 04 Petrana. Powerful Feelings and Clear Images in the Mind.
Petrana is the dark side of violet, a sultry symphony of mystery and mystique. The violet is the calm before the storm, as your sense are quickly engulfed into the tantalizing world of exotic spices and the thrill of exploring a strange, new environment that is far away from home. Transported to a Jordanian desert landscape covered in blooming black iris, Petrana emerges from a foundation of wild orris root and green violet leaf absolute, swirling with herbaceous coriander, spicy pink pepper, and deep purple cassis.

Violet photo from humanflowerproject.com.

DayNa Decker - Innovative & Trendsetting

DayNa Decker is both innovative and trendsetting while creating eco-friendly yet stylish products. A powerful combination of skills and design. She invented the Luminesse Sculpture (shown above) that uses 100% pure plant derived fragranced lamp oil - a first of its kind. She also uses an EcoWood Wick in her chandel that burns clean and creates a soothing crackling sound as it burns.

Diffusers have been a major trend in the home fragrance industry over the last few years. They typically use a decorative vase filled with fragrance oil and bamboo reeds to absorb and diffuse the scent creating a constant fragrance. Some diffusers use ceramic pieces or wood block for diffusion. Other options for constant fragrance are ceramic potpourri or scented rocks.

If you were to invent a stylish product for constant home fragrance,
what would you create?

Post your answer below for a chance to win a 6oz DayNa Decker Clementine Chandel. We'll select a winner on Friday, April 15th. We'll ship the winning candle to any continental US address. Good luck!

DayNa Decker - Background

DayNa Decker's talent for creating seductive, luxurious and decadent home fragrance products evolved while she was immersed in the world of fashion, art and culture as she traveled internationally as a Ford model. She was born with a business sense growing up in a family of design and wellness entrepreneurs. DayNa studied perfumery in Grasse, France to create her innovative and trend-setting fragrance luxuries.

If you could have any talent, training or environment, what would you want?

Post your answer below for a chance to win a DayNa Decker 6oz Leila Chandel. We'll select a winner on Wednesday, April 13, 2011. If you live outside the Annapolis, Maryland area we'll ship the candle to any continental US address. Good luck!

Rise and Shine!

It's one of those mornings where I'm slow to get going. I'm feeling groggy and my eyes don't want to open all the way. It's times like this when I like to start the day with a bright fragrance - something strong and bold.

Most days I make a hot cup of tea and reach for my Aura Clairvoyant candle. It's simple and pungent citrus melange is just the wake up I need. Clairvoyant is a blend of yuzu grapefruit, cassis, orange and rose geranium. I love the way Aura candles burn - clean and easy. I like that no-fuss-no-muss option, especially early in the morning. Aura Clairvoyant is also a wake-up call for the house getting rid of all the stale air from the day before and creating a clean slate for the new day.

The other candle I love when I need a shot of caffeine-fragrance is the Lafco Office candle. The bright green container alone is enough to open my eyes. It's the most brilliant chartruese green. Office is a blend of three of my most favorite invigorating fragrances: eucalyptus, rosemary and wild mint. This fragrance comes alive when burning. It screams not only "Wake up" but also "Make the most of your day!". I love the beautiful glow on the Lafco candles illuminating the oversized, hand-blown glass vessel.

Another fresh fragrance is the Nest Grapefruit candle - a blend of Pink pomelo grapefruit and watery green nuances with lily of the valley and coriander blossom. I love this fresh zesty scent with a hint of floral. Nest candles are crazy fragrant! If you need someone to scream in your ear to wake you up, this is your fragrance equivalent. The soft floral accent makes this fragrance a great choice anytime you want something strong and vibrant to breathe life into the room.

What helps you wake up in the morning? Have you ever tried using fragrances to help start your day? This is a new habit for me that I am really enjoying. I'd love to hear what works for you.