Wax Haul: 16 Candles

What's better than a wax haul you ask? A free wax haul!

I belong to a number of Facebook groups dedicated to wax and last week one of them had organized a fun and fabulous series of pun related games that members could participate in. There were about 50 games and prizes and I was fortunate enough to win one of them! The prize I won was for a generous $30 gift certificate to a brand I hadn't heard of before called 16 Candles, donated by Jeremy the owner. I was so excited to have the opportunity to try a new to me brand and the process of picking out products and scents was really fun.
When I visited the 16 Candles website here, I found a professional looking and well organized site that was a pleasure to browse through. One of the first things I noticed was a pop up bar that invites customers to sign up for their rewards program where you can instantly earn $5 off your order. Since I had a $30 gift certificate code and the site only allows you to use one discount code at a time, I will save my $5 off for a future order. If you are interested in trying this brand you can follow the easy rewards sign up steps to get $5 off your first order!

When I browse a wax vendor website, I usually like to look for unique scents that sound pleasant to me. I like to try a wide variety of scents and not have to many extremely similar scents in my stash. Usually it's those special and unique type blends that get me really hooked on a particular brand, as well as themes, nice shapes/packaging and good customer service.

These are the scents I ended up choosing:

I chose a variety of shapes in clamshells, 2 packs of scalloped 1 oz tarts and a large travel tin 2-wick candle with lid. I love to try all the different options a brand offers and find out what works best for me. The products on the site were all reasonably and competitively priced. Even in I hadn't had the gift certificate I would have felt like I got a lot of products for my money. The 14 oz 2-wick travel tin candles are only $13 so for less than $1 oz, I think that's a great deal. Here is part of the description from the site: "These 16 ounce large tin soy candles are hand poured with 100 percent natural soy wax and contains fragrance oils, two cotton wicks dipped in natural wax, and are dye free."

I chose the chai latte scent as I usually tend to like that type of scent. As my order just arrived today, this is the only 16  Candles product I've tested out so far. 

I've had it melting for nearly 3 hours and as you can see it's developing a nice wax  pool, almost to the edges of the container. The wicks are evenly spaces and burning strongly, not flickering or attempting to drown themselves. The tin is sturdy as well; this seems to be a quality candle. As far as throw, I tend to not get as strong of throw from 100% soy candles as I do with paraffin or para-soy blends. I would describe this candle as having moderate to light throw. It took a while for the scent to permeate the air. It is a nice spicy chai aroma, not too sweet. For the first hour or so I could only smell the scent directly above the candle, but it slowly started to produce more scent and I can now smell it lightly throughout the small room. I do prefer my candles to be a bit stronger, but overall I am happy with it's performance. I don't know whether I would purchase other candles from this site, but I might like to try more scents. 16 candles offers several other sizes of soy candles, from 16 oz sizes all the way down to tea lights, in dozens of scents.

Now onto the wax. My order shipped quickly; the site's TAT is stated as 3-5 days and I did receive my items with 7 business days, about 9 days total. With my $30 subtracted I only had to pay for 1 tart, shipping and tax which came out to $11.15 total. The shipping itself was a very reasonable $8.95. The items were very securely packaged in a medium flat rate box with lots of tissue paper, bubble wrap and styrofoam "cheetos." Everything arrived in pristine condition.

The items were all packaged exactly as they had looked in their photos on the website. 

The packaging is clean, simple and very professional and appealing. This is not a brand with a lot of novelties or gimmicks, just well made wax with a variety of blends. They have several dozen different scent offerings but the scent list is not overwhelming. 

I will do individual reviews on these scents as I melt them, but on cold all the scents smelled strong and pleasant; I chose well and didn't end up with anything unpleasant. The ones I'm most excited to try are Coriander & Tonka, Pomegranate Green Tea and Rosemary Mint. The clams are $3 and the 2 pack 1oz tarts are $2.20. I was also pleasantly surprised to receive 3 1 oz free samples in Cotton Candy, Pomegranate Spice and Sweet Pea. All smell good to me and freebies definitely win bonus points in my book.

Communication with the owner was prompt and professional and I had a really good first ordering experience with 16 Candles. I will be excited to melt and share with you these scents, and I would definitely consider ordering from this brand again.

Have you ever heard of or tried 16 Candles? Does this brand or these scents interest you?