BESOTTED BRAND SNEAK PEEK:: APOTHECARY

I sent my lovely friend Jules these candles the other day as part of her birthday gift, they are test candles for the upcoming launch of the Besotted Brand apothecary offerings. I made a batch for a charity sale I committed to a few weeks back. When I agreed to participate I was under the delusional impression that I would be able to launch a new business, get married and create an entire line of apothecary offerings in 8 weeks. Unfortunately, math has never been my strong suit. I wasn't ready for the sale, or as ready as my perfectionist self would have preferred, after all it took me three years to launch a business that I thought I would launch, uh, three years ago, I wanted everything to be perfect when I launched when I know (perfectly) well that nothing is perfect. I have been playing with variations on the packaging, I sourced the best glass it's thick, really thick (completely recycled), I am sure the mailman thought I was sending Jules an anvil or something. So you have this heavy glass with over half a pound of the finest hand-poured natural wax in each container and you have something that is going to cost you a gold eye-tooth if you want it sent internationally.  There's also over an ounce of essential oil and parfum grade fragrance oil in each pound of wax, so that makes them too expensive to sell retail. Sigh.  The concept for the first offerings of the apothecary are nature identical scents, I have worked tirelessly for years (yes, years) to create some of these offerings.  I am pretty convinced that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between my tuberose fragrance and a cut tuberose if you were blindfolded and walked into a tuberose sniff test. My gardenia needs work, but it's not too bad as far as scents go, it needs to be creamier but it's this close. One of the candles I made was Meyer lemon, it's really fresh and doesn't have that synthetic note of cleaning solution that you often get when trying to work with lemon. I am coo coo for Clementines, that smell to me is the equivalent of happy, it's one of the only essential oils that I work with that actually smells like the source it came from. Rose is eluding me, one day I shall conquer it and make something bright and fresh and in one fell swoop dispel the 'old lady' reputation that rose parfum has. It's a process my friends, Rome wasn't built in a day and if I was in control of that project, well Rome would still be just a twinkle in Italy's eye.

photo by:: Jules Kendall