Behind every jar of Linneas Lights candles is a mother and daughter team with a Swedish name and a soft spot for nature, and that story is worth knowing before you light one.
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Linnea’s Lights was founded by a mother/daughter team, Lynn Manley and her daughter Laura Cler. In tribute to their Swedish family lineage, the name Linnea’s Lights comes from the Swedish word Linnea (the national flower of Sweden) from which Lynn’s name originated. Lynn and Laura’s resourceful outlook towards nature remains an integral & important part of their business, and Linnea’s Lights will forever be an environmentally mindful company. Linnea’s Lights candles combine natural soy wax, lead-free cotton candlewicks, pure essences and fine fragrances to create clean burning, perfectly scented and highly aromatic candles.
Linnea’s Lights Blog Contest!
Join us for a chance to win 1 of 2 prize packs featuring candles 3 Linnea’s Lights candles. One prize pack will feature French Pear, Pumpkin and Pomander. The other prize pack will feature Forest Fir, Winter and Fireside. (Retail value $90 per prize pack.)
To enter, simply submit a blog post (text only) to Contest@CandlesOffMain.com by Thursday, December 1, 2011. The blog post must have a fragrance theme. For bonus points, the blog post should have some reference to your mother and/or a fragrance experience you’ve had with your mother. For additional bonus points, the blog should reference one or more products or brands on our website, CandlesOffMain.com. If you would like to submit personal photos simply attached them to the email with your blog post.
We reserve the right to post your blog entry at any time during the contest and keep it on our blog indefinitely. (We, of course, will give you credit on the post as a guest blogger). We also reserve the right to not post your blog entry if we don’t feel it is the right fit for our blog.
We will select 2 winning blog posts on Friday, December 2, 2011 and announce the winners on Facebook, Twitter and here. We’ll ship the prize pack to any address in the continental US.
Good luck!
12/4: Congratulations to Ryan Patrick Kelley and Caitlin Feener for winning the Linnea’s Lights blog contest. I’ll post the winning posts soon.
What Linneas Lights candles are made of
The company was founded by Lynn Manley and her daughter Laura Cler, and they build their candles from natural soy wax, lead free cotton wicks and fine fragrances. That combination is common among small makers now, but it was a real talking point in 2011, and I still see customers ask about it every week.
Ask any customer about Linneas Lights and soy comes up first. The brand built its name on soy wax, and Linneas Lights has kept to that plan.
Soy wax tends to burn slowly and cleanly, and it is easy to clean off a jar once the candle is finished. The soy candles gives a plain overview if you want to compare it with paraffin or beeswax.
Clean burning is a claim every maker makes, so I judge by how the jar looks after a few burns. A soot free glass is a good sign. With Linneas Lights candles I have rarely had to wipe a jar, and that tells me more than a label does.
A name with a Swedish root
I like a brand with a story I can retell at the counter. The name comes from the Swedish word Linnea, the flower Lynn’s own name grew from, and it is a tidy little tribute to the family’s heritage. It also tells you the makers think about nature first.
That outlook shows up in the details, from the soy wax to the packaging. When I recommend Linneas Lights candles to someone who cares about the environment, I can point to specifics instead of vague promises.
A resourceful outlook toward nature is also easy to say and hard to do. Using packaging with recycled content is one visible sign, and a company that keeps small means that it can talk to its customers face to face.
The people behind Linneas Lights are a real mother and daughter, which is rare enough to mention.
How the blog contest worked
Our blog contest offered two prize packs of three candles each. To enter, you wrote a text only post with a fragrance theme and sent it by the deadline. Bonus points went to posts that mentioned a mother or a scent memory with her, and to those that named products from our site.
I like contests with a writing task because the entries teach me something. Reading how people describe a smell makes me a better salesperson, and I hope it makes the writers better noses.
The original rules also let us post any entry at any time during the contest, with credit to the guest blogger, and we kept the right to skip posts that did not fit. Two winners were chosen after the closing date. It was a friendly contest, and I would run something like it again.
Our Linneas Lights blog contest was one of my favorites that season.
Choosing among Linneas Lights candles
If you are unsure where to start, think in seasons. Fruit and pear scents lean toward early fall, pumpkin and pomander lean toward the holidays, and fir and winter blends suit the coldest months. Our Fireside candle post is a good example of a cozy wood and smoke blend.
For a taste of how our readers write about them, have a look at Jim and Dorothy Samson’s contest entry. It shows how much two people can love the same brand for very different reasons.
One last thing about Linneas Lights candles: a mother and daughter business is a lovely reason to buy. Gifts feel better when the story behind them is warm.
In short, Linneas Lights is a brand with a story and a scent range for every season.
Header photo: Maksym Kozlenko, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
