- I sat down to wait for Isla at Grand Central Bakery in Sellwood. She walked in with effervescent exuberance, greeting each Grand Central employee by name and then proceeding to ask with genuine curiosity about each of their mornings. For those of you who frequent the Portland Homestead Supply, you have probably had the chance to interact with the lovely Isla; she works the front desk on Tuesdays and teaches the candle making classes at the store. The pleasant surprise is that she is not only an employee, but also a vendor! Isla is the proud owner of Wee Mindings, a small business that sells heart-felt gifts like candles, lotion bars, lip balms, and soaps. Read below to find out more about Isla, the inspiration for her business, and helpful candle-making tips.When did you start making candles, and how did you learn?When I was living overseas, I bought several books on candle making. I would read about it, but also would buy a candle every time I went shopping. As soon as we moved to Sellwood three years ago, I signed up for a candle-making class with Kristl. I was in one of the first candle-making classes taught at the Homestead Supply. I fell in love with it! I got home and decided that I needed to learn all the nitty-gritty about candle-making in order to make it into a business for myself. I started my business in January of 2013.
Tell me the story behind Wee Mindings.
Wee Mindings means little gifts in Scottish. When I was growing up, my granny used to come to boarding school and give us little treats. She would come and say, “Here’s a wee minding for you to cheer you up!” We shared a love for potions and lotions, so she would usually drop off little hand creams at school for me. My granny passed away about eight years ago at the age of 90 after a good, long life. We were really close, and I wanted to honor her in some way through my business. So that’s the Wee Mindings. I also think it’s hard to find affordable but good quality little gifts. My concept is to make really high quality products that are affordable for a big section of the population. When I used to go shopping for nice candles, they were in the $30 range, which is ridiculous for a candle. We all need little gifts on hand that won’t break the bank!
Is making the candles affordable a big challenge for you?
It’s not. I’m lucky that I can obtain most of my ingredients locally. I get many products through the Portland Homestead Supply store. The challenge is not making the candles affordable, but is finding stores where my products fit. A lot of the stores think that good candles need to sell for $25 or more, and I think there is a big market in Portland for people seeking natural and nicely packaged gifts in the $5 to $20 price range.
Where else do you sell, besides online?
I sell at a wonderful fair trade shop on Mississippi called PDXchange. They carry many of my products – candles, lip balms and bath sachets. The Sellwood Dog Supply also carries my candles!
What are common challenges beginners face in making soaps or candles? Do you have any “pro-tips” to share from your work?
One of the cool things about candle-making is that it’s a journey. Maybe one day you’ll do something and it turns out great. The next day you may have a big sinkhole in the top of your candle. People get frustrated that they’ve done everything according to the instructions, and it hasn’t turned out just right. I like to say that the best thing to do is to take notes. Write down what your pour temperature is and see how that effects the overall look of your candles. That way, if there are any issues you can adjust the temperature accordingly. I give out lots of tips in the candle making class on how to create soy and beeswax candles at home, and how to fix any imperfections. My key point to share is that if you want to have consistent results with your candles, you need to be measuring temperatures, and practice makes perfect!
What types of wax do you use for candle making? What are the pros and cons of the waxes that you use?
I use both soy and beeswax. I love beeswax because it’s a natural, renewable resource and it makes the longest burning natural candle you can make. Beeswax candles burn about twice as long as a soy candle the same size. The only con about beeswax is that you have to find a melting pot to dedicate to beeswax, as it doesn’t clean up easily. It can also be trickier to find the correct wick size when working with beeswax.
I really enjoy working with soy because I personally love fragrant not overpowering candles, and soy holds fragrance really well. Soy is a very clean burning vegetable, so it’s easy to clean up, unlike beeswax.
Soy burns twice as long as a paraffin candle the same size. Paraffin candles are what you see in most stores like Target and World Market. Paraffin is the cheapest wax you can buy. It is created from the sludge waste when crude oil is refined into gasoline. It contains a lot of dodgy chemicals, mainly formaldehyde and benzene. When you burn paraffin, it is emitting those chemicals into the air. I chose to work with soy and beeswax because I want to create natural candles that are not toxic, and are safe to burn around the entire family and pets.
Different soy waxes exist for different applications. You would want a low melting soy wax if you were using essential oils with a really low flash point, like lemon or sweet orange essential oil. You couldn’t add those essential oils into a 150 degree soy wax because they would just evaporate.
For people that are just starting out, where would you suggest getting materials or doing classes?
All are available at the Homestead Supply store! We have people come from out of town, the Gorge, Oregon Coast because they find us online and know we have everything to make candles from start to finish. We have the wicks, the tabs, the wax, the molds, the containers.
What is your favorite “wee minding” that you have created over the years?
I set up a booth at the Scottish Highland Games last summer. It was really nice for me to see who bought my products and why. Most people are drawn to my logo and to the Celtic script. What I loved about it most was that they wanted to share with me tales of their Scottish heritage. A lady bought a candle at the Highland Games and went back to North Carolina. It was a ‘Secret Garden’ candle that smells of sweet violet and lime. She emailed me right before Christmas and asked if I could use the candle fragrance in soaps so she could wash in it! She told me that she suffered from depression her whole life and that the fragrance made her happy. That would be one of my favorite customer stories!
How do you see your work fitting into the larger homesteading movement?
Unlike some of the other vendors who are selling items that you buy to help create something, I am actually handcrafting goods for the gift category. I operate in kind of direct competition with people who come in to create their own candles. I hope that for every person that wants to do that, there is another who says, “Oh, here’s a candle ready made up, and I’m going to buy it.” Similarly to other homesteaders, I go by the premise that I like to use ingredients that are beneficial to your health and skin. Sharing my candle making skills with others in the candle class gives me a lot of joy, and helps me be more of a homesteader!
What is your vision for your business five or ten years down the road?
My immediate goal would be to try to expand into a couple more stores that I love in the Portland area. I’ve met with New Seasons and Whole Foods about getting my products into their stores. Unfortunately, right now, I don’t have the manpower to sell there, should I be fortunate enough for them to express an interest, because I create and package everything from start to finish, which is really time-consuming. Unless I expand and hire people, being in a big retailer would not be feasible. It’s not to say that I wouldn’t like that down the road, but I’d need to do a lot of thinking. In the immediate future, selling in small boutique gift shops in the Portland metro area is my goal.
For the people that read this on the Homestead blog, I’d love to say a huge thank you to everyone who has purchased a Wee Minding for themselves or as a gift, or attended a candle class. Thank you for supporting my business and I wish all of you a new year filled with light and joy!
And last but not least, thank you to the Portland Homestead Supply – the first store in Portland to carry Wee Mindings. I’m so grateful for everything you have done for me.
You can browse through Isla’s products at her website – www.weemindings.com.