Andrea Villarreal sent in a joyful Linnea’s Lights blog contest entry about clean burning soy candles and the scents that take her straight home, and it deserves a longer look.
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Guest post by Andrea Villarreal
for Linnea’s Lights Blog Contest
I am telling you these are the BEST candles ever!!!
I first bought one in Laguna Beach at a store called Anthology. It was White Coral and I absolutely fell in love! I had it burning in my room and you could literally smell it through the whole house. The fragrance is so saturated and yummy. They also have cotton wicks and burn really cleanly. I bought a Yankee Candle at Target the other day and literally had to set it outside after blowing it out. It refused to stop smoking!!
Then at Remnants of the Past I found them at The Beautiful Life booth and they had Pumpkin! Oh my gosh I can not begin to tell you how fantastic it smelled!! It took me right back to my mom’s kitchen on a Thanksgiving morning! Nostalgia:)
So now I am going to try some of their Winter scents and I found a really great website called Candles Off Main. Now in the stores they run $32-34. On the site they are all $30 with no tax. And even better FREE shipping and handling!!
They have tons of other companies as well like Archipelago Botanicals, Votivo, Modern Alchemy and about 30 others. So if you are looking for your favorite scent or looking to try something new. Check them out Candles Off Main. I ordered Lavender, Winter and Fireside🙂
Have a wonderful day!
What stands out in this Linnea’s Lights blog contest entry
Andrea’s enthusiasm is the first thing you notice. She writes about a candle filling a whole house, and about hunting for scents in shops and booths. That kind of persistence is how most of us end up with a favorite brand.
She also compares a smoking supermarket candle with a clean one, and I want to pick up that thread because it comes up in the shop all the time.
In a contest like this, an honest reader beats a polished writer every time, and this Linnea’s Lights blog contest entry is honest from the first line. She names the shops where she found the candles, which tells me she really went looking. I also love that she carried a scent from Laguna Beach to her own bedroom.
A good blog contest entry reads like a note from a friend. This blog contest entry does, with its shop names and its exclamation points. It is easy to see why we published it.
Why some candles smoke and others do not
A candle that refuses to stop smoking after you blow it out is usually fighting its own wick. Wicks that are too long, too thick for the jar or sitting in a draft will smolder and sometimes leave soot behind. Cotton wicks are a common choice for a tidy burn, and the history of candle wicks explains how wicks are made.
Trim the wick to about a quarter inch before each burn, keep the candle away from fans and open windows, and let the wax pool reach the edge before you put it out. Those three habits fix more complaints than any fancy accessory.
If a candle still smokes after that, it may simply be the wrong candle for that jar. No amount of fussing will cure a bad match between wick and wax.
So when a reader tells me a candle smoked, I ask about the wick first and the brand second. A Linnea’s Lights blog contest entry that praises clean burning is really praising a good match of wick, wax and vessel, and that is worth looking for in any candle.
If you are judging your own blog contest entry, ask whether a reader could smell what you describe.
Scent as nostalgia
Her pumpkin story made me smile. She says it took her right back to her mom’s kitchen on a Thanksgiving morning, and honestly that is the best review a seasonal candle can get. Autumn scents work because they borrow from baking, spices and warm rooms we already trust.
If you are weighing winter scents next, as Andrea is, our post on winter candles from this maker is a good place to begin, and the Fireside candle sits nicely beside it.
Pumpkin is a good example of a scent that people either want in September or never. The ones that work usually read as spiced baking, not a raw squash, and that is what Andrea seems to have found. Test a pumpkin candle in your own kitchen before you decide.
Nostalgia is the quiet engine of this blog contest entry, since the pumpkin candle ends up in her mom’s kitchen. That is how a good blog contest entry works.
Writing your own contest entry
If this Linnea’s Lights blog contest entry makes you want to write one, pick one scent and one moment. Say what you smelled, where you were and what it reminded you of, and skip the superlatives. Readers believe small details more than exclamation marks.
Read the rules twice, send your entry before the deadline and keep it to the theme. The posts that stay with us are the ones that sound like a real person talking over a cup of tea.
Prices and shipping offers change, so treat the numbers in any contest post as a snapshot of the day it was written, and check the shop page before you order.
One more tip for anyone entering a blog contest: write the way you speak. Contest hosts can tell when a post was written for them and when it was written from the heart.
Before you send a blog contest entry anywhere, read it aloud once. A blog contest entry that sounds natural out loud will read naturally on the page.
Header photo: No machine-readable author provided. Jeroalex~commonswiki assumed (based on copy, Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
