| Desert SonLight™
Scented Candles & more. Made in Southwestern USA. |
Flower Scented Candles Spicy Scented Candles Fresh & Woodsy Scented Candles Fruit & Food Scented Candles Complete Candle Listing |
    Desert SonLight of New Mexico Just For You Fresh Spring and Summer flowers; the delicious scents of the kitchen; refreshing Spa Scents; the invigorating scents of outdoors - whether the fragrance is subtle or strong; fresh, clean, spicy or flowery - Desert Sonlight candles has the perfect candle for you. Over 60 fragrances available with more 'in the works' and coming soon. What Makes a "Good" Candle? We all know a "bad" candle when we see one. It's usually black, covered with soot. There's a lot of dirty wax inside the jar; a lot of the wax didn't burn (tunnelling). The scent is gone or bad. Or the scent does not "throw" well - no smell. The wick has disappeared. The owner is usually somewhat unhappy with the candle. And many times you paid a lot for the candle. Disappointing. There are many factors which make a "good" candle. A good candle is one that the scent is accurate (smells like the "real thing"); the scent is strong; the candle burns clean - minimal smoke; it burns long and all the wax burns up; The scent lasts to the bottom of the jar; it requires minimal maintenance. You can smell the scent throughout a large room to much of the house. And the candle is 'cost-effective' - that is, you receive real value for the money. Our candles are not perfect by any means. But they are some of the best you can buy. Read on. Strong-scented candles Whether the fragrance is a flower, fruit, food, spice, or an outdoor fresh-clean scent, you will find that our scents are truly accurate and memorable. Our candles smell just like they are supposed to! And the candle fragrance lasts to the bottom of the jar - strong all the way! Now there are many "triple-scented" candles on the market. 'Triple-scented' means that the wax manufacturer suggests that "so much" fragrance be added per unit weight of wax. The candle maker then adds 3 times that suggested amount, thus 'triple-scented'. Desert Sonlight candles are at least 'triple-scented' - and more! We add the max fragrance that the wax will hold. This ensures a lot of fragrance will be 'thrown' into your room. Other factors - probably more important than the quantity of fragrance used - are the quality and purity of the fragrance used in making the candle. A fragrance (perfume) can be made to a higher or lower quality standard. You may have, for example, smelled a 'cheap' rose scent. A poor quality scent is thin, weak and barely resembles a rose. A high-quality scent will be strong, robust and really smell like roses! And that is what we use. (Ours smells better than many real roses!) And there are 'pure' fragrances - as made by the fragrance manufacturer. These 'pure' fragrances are often cut by adding one or more solvents. For example, a 'designer perfume' sold at a department store contains a very high-quality, complex fragrance cut by a small percentage of carrier to facilitate application. And a "cheap" perfume at a discount store contains a low-quality fragrance possibly cut by 70 to 90%. The fragrances we use in our candles are pure, top-quality, uncut, robust fragrances direct from the manufacturers. They are strong and accurate scents. And they perform in our candles, filling your room with a wonderful scent. Use of 'Candle Warmers' Our candles work great when you burn them, filling a room (or more) with fragrance. Also, they work great on candle warmers, or heaters. They can be safely left on a warmer for hours. The wax melts and the fragrance comes out. Many people use warmers in offices and other locations where an open flame is not permitted or not wanted. Many warmer-users report that the large candle has lasted 3 months, in use every day, on a warmer in their offices. Soy Wax Our candles use a modern soy wax blend. Our wax burns clean and is as smoke free as any wax can be; it throws fragrance very well. The wax gives a bright - shiny - color to the candles; not a dull or pastel look. This is the best wax available on the market today for a container candle. Lead-Free Wicks Our wicks are zinc core or cotton core. No lead. Actually, any candle made in the U.S.A. has no lead in the wick. Wick cores are made from paper, cotton, tin or zinc. Candles made outside of the country may have a lead-containing core in the wick - Far East is the most suspect. Again, ours contain no lead. Our Large-Glass Top candles (130-hour) and our Medium Glass-Top candles (100 hour) have two (2) wicks with cotton cores. The 50-hour candles have a single wick with a zinc core. Zinc is harmless. Essential Oil Fragrances Many candles are advertised as having "Essential Oils" for the scent/fragrance. This is misleading. An "Essential Oil" is extracted from the plant - typically the freshly picked flower. Many flowers have essential oils extracted; many do not. Rose and Jasmine, for example, have essential oils, but the oils are very expensive - on the order of $2000.00 per pound. (no typo - 2000.00) These are used in very limited quantities in costly perfume and skin care products. Most flowers - lily, gardenia - have no essential oils. And one, Lavender, is very common and relatively inexpensive. Perfumers have succeeded in making perfumes that smell exactly like the real flowers, so in most all cases, essential oils are not used - just a good fragrance oil. So if you see an advertisement for a scented candle made with "essential oils", it is not, with a few exceptions. We use pure essential oils in a half dozen of our candles. These are labeled with an "EO" or similar. Our EO candles are: Lavender, Sunburst (lemongrass), PepperMary (peppermint and rosemary), Eucalyptus Spice (eucalyptus, camphor), Patchouly (when available), and Garden Spa (spearmint, eucalyptus). Other than that, we use top quality fragrance oils that smell like the real thing! Natural Fragrances Several candles use natural essential oil fragrances including Lavender, Eucalyptus-Spice, Garden Spa, PepperMary and Sunburst. These are true aromatherapy candles. Our Deodorizer candle is a unique 'odor-eater'. And other candles reflect scents of the Southwest (Pinon Pine, Whispering Sands, Evergreen, Desert Skies). Long Burning and Smoke-Free Our three styles of candles are rated at 50-, 100-, and 130 hours. In most cases, the actual burn time will be longer than the rating. Properly maintained, all the wax in the candle will burn - no tunneling, no digging, no pouring off; and the candles burn nearly smoke-free. Maintenance is simple: trim the wick as needed. Use common sense: If the candle is smoking or turning black with soot, trim the wick. If the candle is flickering and starting to smoke, trim the wick. If the melt pool is over 1/2 inch deep, trim the wick. Otherwise, leave it alone. Read all instructions that come with your candle! Don't let the trimmings fall into the wax pool - they could become a fire hazard when the candle burns down. Let the candle melt to the edge - this prevents tunneling. And don't burn it too long. After several hours, the candle can become hot with a deep melt pool. If this happens, extinguish the candle and let it cool off. Our 2-wick candles allow you to burn the candle using only one wick once the candle has burned down inside the jar. When the melt pool is established, you can extinguish one wick and continue burning using only one wick. This will reduce the temperature inside the container and will increase the burn time. Be sure to alternate wicks to keep the wax level. Please note that if you have a candle-burning problem or question, please email us at question (at) desertsonlight.com. (Replace the "(at)" with an "@"!) Easy to Order Our website is set up using the PayPal shopping cart for on-line shopping. Visit a descriptive candle page to select the fragrance, choose the size and quantity you want. (The order can be changed or cancelled at any time.) When complete, you can submit your order on-line on the PayPal secure server; or you can print out your final order and mail or FAX it to us with credit information. (You don't have to be a PayPal member to use the service. We have found the service to be safe and reliable. They do take credit cards.) If you don't care to run your card across the web, print our order form and mail/FAX it to us. You can also print out a blank order form on the Mail & Fax Order Form page, then write your order off-line at your convenience and FAX or mail it to us. We accept major credit cards, checks and money orders. Or you can place an order by phone on our toll-free number. All candles are in-stock and we ship via UPS every day. If you have a special request or a question, just email us at "questions (at) desertsonlight.com". We'll get back pronto. Shipping We ship using either UPS or the US Postal Service. All orders incur a flat rate shipping charge of $7.50 per order unless the order qualifies for free shipping (see below). We normally ship within a day or two of when the order is placed; many times we ship the same day. Post Office shipments are smaller orders and go by Priority Mail. UPS shipments are by UPS Ground and take up to 5 business days to arrive. UPS will email you shipping and tracking information so you can track your package from your computer. Shipments to AK and HI are all via Priority Mail and generally incur some extra shipping charges. Free Shipping Offer All orders placed with a total order value of $65.00 (USD) or more, will be shipped free (via UPS or Postal Service) to addresses in the continental United States including APO boxes. Shipments to AK and HI (via Post Office priority mail) will also be "free" but may require a surcharge to offset extra shipping costs. We will email you about that. If you need it in a hurry, we can ship UPS 3 Day Select or 2nd Day Air. We can ship to Canada and other countries using either UPS or Priority Mail. But extra shipping charges and possibly duties may apply. Check USPS.com for approximate rates and shipping methods. (Slow boat/surface mail is not as expensive, but takes a (very!) long time - like forever.) Made in the U.S.A. Everything (really!) is made by us in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, area, (Rio Rancho) from parts and ingredients (most of which are) made in the USA. Scent Descriptions Our main ORDER form lists all currently available fragrances and sizes with links to the individual candle pages. (Also discontinued scents when there are a few units available.) For a description of the individual scents, visit the descriptive pages: |
Our three candle sizes: our "Large Glass Top"/130 Hour candle; our "Medium Glass Top" / 100-hour rating, and our "50-Hour" candle. Our medium candle is the same diameter as the large candle, just shorter. The two larger candles have 2 wicks for efficient burning. |
Updated January, 2008
