What Goes Into a Rooted Remedy Candle

There are parts of making a candle that are easy to see. Wax being poured into a vessel. A wick centered and waiting. A label added at the end.

Then there are all the decisions that happen before and after those moments. Choosing what I want to work with. Testing a scent until I’m happy with it. Cleaning the vessel before I begin and cleaning it again when I’m finished. Deciding how it should look when someone opens the package.

That whole process is Rooted Remedy.

I started this company in my home in St. Cloud, Florida, and I’ve kept the work close to home on purpose. Small batch has always mattered to me because I want what I make to continue feeling like something that could have been made for one particular person. That idea has been part of Rooted Remedy from the beginning.

It starts long before I pour the wax

I personally choose every material and component that becomes part of a Rooted Remedy candle.

I use a coconut soy wax made with USA-grown soybeans and manufactured here in the United States. I choose fragrances that are infused with essential oils, and I thoughtfully select the cotton wicks I use in my candles.

The vessels get just as much consideration.

I want the candle to feel like a gift before it is ever wrapped. I look for vessels that are beautiful sitting on a shelf or kitchen counter, but I also think about what happens when the candle is gone. I want the jar to be something you hesitate to throw away. Something you might clean out and find another use for because you like having it in your home.

That matters to me because Rooted Remedy started with giving, and that still shapes the way I think about what I make.

Then the making begins

Before I pour anything, I clean the vessels and wick each one by hand.

Then I pour the candles myself.

There is something satisfying about seeing a row of empty vessels become finished candles, but pouring is only one part of the work. I also test every scent myself. Once the candles are finished, I clean the vessels again and add the custom scent labels.

These are small steps when you look at them individually. Together, they are what make a candle feel finished.

I don't want a Rooted Remedy candle to feel like a generic product that happened to have my name put on it at the end. By the time it is ready to leave my house, I have chosen its components, prepared its vessel, wicked it, poured it, tested the scent, cleaned it and labeled it.

And the work doesn't stop with candles.

For my simmer pots, I dry the ingredients myself. I hand-stamp every gift bag. Those products are different from my candles, but I approach them in much the same way. I want to stay close to what I'm making and how it will eventually be given.

Getting it from my home to yours

Once the product itself is finished, there is still another side of Rooted Remedy that I care about just as much.

I photograph the products. I write the words that describe them. I work on the website where you find them. I think through the packaging and what it feels like to receive it.

I don't see those things as separate from making the product. They are how I introduce something I've made in my home to someone who wasn't here to watch it being made.

The photograph should look like the candle you're going to receive. The description should sound like the scent I've spent time working on. The packaging should make sense for something you might be carrying into a friend's house, putting under a Christmas tree or handing to someone simply because you were thinking about them.

That's where all of these individual decisions finally meet.

I know where the candle started. I know who cleaned the vessel, centered the wick, poured the wax, tested the scent, added the label, took the photograph and wrote the description.

What I don't know is where it goes next.

It might be a birthday gift. A thank-you. Something brought to a neighbor. Something you bought for yourself and later decide belongs with somebody else.

That's the part I get to leave open.

My job is to make sure that when it leaves my home, it feels ready to enter yours, or the home of someone you care about.

That is what I mean when I say Rooted Remedy is made to be given.