Medway Candle is so pleased to announce that the fine people at Pete's Frootique have added our beeswax candles to their line-up of natural products. Fact is, we've had a little piece of wedding cake under our pillows for a year, waiting and hoping that the best grocery and gourmet store in the province would take a gander at our candles, lip balm and creams: with Pete's stellar natural products section and their focus on providing the best to the folks of Halifax (and all of us who travel to the city to buy from their fantastic cheese counter, outrageous dessert shop and endless arrays of fresh veg) , it seemed like a match made in Heaven! Knowing that our beeswax candles are keeping company with the fine soaps, SLS-free shampoos and lovely essential oils crowding the shelves at Pete's on Spring Garden Road gives us a warm Medway Candle glow...
Monday, August 15, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
Stinky Bee Becomes Buzz Off--and Bites are Down 80%!
Our new venture into mosquito repellent has been big fun and our test groups are telling us they like Buzz Off (nee, Stinky Bee) for all the bites they aren't getting. Tested on Long Cove Road, the buggiest place in Port Medway, with occasional forays into Keji adjunct and up the Mersey River with some naturalists, Buzz Off seems to be repelling the little devils at least as well as scary DEET-based bug juice, and without the toxicity. Made with smelly essential oils researched in tropical climes like India and Thailand, our Buzz Off is composed of affordable and safe oils each shown to prevent bites. Personally, we hate the smell (having spilled a batch on the kitchen table), but our testers like it fine! Some are even using it as a perfume!
Made with four top-secret essential oils in a carrier base of grapeseed or olive oil, Buzz Off works for a solid hour before you need to reapply. One ingredient was chosen for its reputation as a tick repellent, the others, all repellents in their own right, work synergistically to offend mosquitoes and send them off looking for something else to eat. They'll still buzz you, but you'll find you get significantly fewer bites.
Now, if someone would only come up with a way to get us to put the stuff on BEFORE we go outside and get the first ten bites! (Why do we always hope there won't be any bugs?) One thing for sure, for Buzz Off to work, you have to put it on!
Our new, 25ml bottles are thick green glass--gorgeous--and sell for only $10.
Made with four top-secret essential oils in a carrier base of grapeseed or olive oil, Buzz Off works for a solid hour before you need to reapply. One ingredient was chosen for its reputation as a tick repellent, the others, all repellents in their own right, work synergistically to offend mosquitoes and send them off looking for something else to eat. They'll still buzz you, but you'll find you get significantly fewer bites.
Now, if someone would only come up with a way to get us to put the stuff on BEFORE we go outside and get the first ten bites! (Why do we always hope there won't be any bugs?) One thing for sure, for Buzz Off to work, you have to put it on!
Our new, 25ml bottles are thick green glass--gorgeous--and sell for only $10.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Why Glass?
Our signature cobalt glass jars are the result of weeks of searching not just this continent but the whole world for just the right containers. It's not easy to find good containers in eastern Canada; most people give up and use clear plastic. But when you're using essential oils and vegetable carrier oils, you want to keep them as strong as possible for as long as possible. Essential oils keep their useful qualities when you keep them from the light, and we already knew that glass isn't going to leach chemicals into products the way plastics do. So we went out of our way to find lovely, thick, dark glass jars for our water-free Bee Serious and Bee Balm and our Bee Cool lip balm too. They cost a little more, but they're worth it. Recyclable, beautiful and safe, our cobalt jars are one example of how when compromising would have been easier, we stuck to our plan. If you're gonna do it, do it right.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Welcome to The Studios at Key West!
Photos from our candle shop and herb garden. Photos by Mike Bienstock...
Black currant in bloom...
Melting beeswax for candlemaking
Lady's mantle, muscari and dandelion...
Tapers...
Spearmint, wild fruit mint and creeping Charlie
Purple and white violets and essential oils.
Votive candles
Tapers...
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Bee Serious is for Seriously Sensitive Skin
Most people don't realize that hand creams are waaay over-engineered. Who knows why companies put so much junk in their products? A tiny pot of hand cream can have 25 or 30 ingredients!
The problems with having a lot of ingredients are several: for one thing, the more ingredients, the more likely there will be interactions between the various components, which may be irritating to delicate skin.
Another problem with lots of ingredients is that the useful or "active" ingredients can be present in teeny amounts and the manufacturer can list them on the packaging, even though their effects are nonexistent. So you'll see lotions or creams advertised "with aloe" or "with Vitamin E", but there's not enough to do you any good. Such products are "filled" with chemicals, additives, preservatives and usually the main ingredient, water.
A third problem is that the more ingredients, the more likely people with sensitivities will be sensitive to one or more ingredients. Some of us can't use "ordinary" ingredients like lanolin, alcohol or aromatics like camphor, which is cooling and smells nice, but can be irritating.
So we've created Bee Serious salve. Partly out of selfishness--the creator struggled with sensitive, cracked and painful hands for 30 years. Bee Serious cured her. Her hands are smooth and soft and healed. Bee Serious has an oil, a wax and essential oils. That's it. It works. If your hands overreact to soaps, dust, housework or gardening, if your skin cracks and hurts, try Bee Serious. Seriously.
The problems with having a lot of ingredients are several: for one thing, the more ingredients, the more likely there will be interactions between the various components, which may be irritating to delicate skin.
Another problem with lots of ingredients is that the useful or "active" ingredients can be present in teeny amounts and the manufacturer can list them on the packaging, even though their effects are nonexistent. So you'll see lotions or creams advertised "with aloe" or "with Vitamin E", but there's not enough to do you any good. Such products are "filled" with chemicals, additives, preservatives and usually the main ingredient, water.
A third problem is that the more ingredients, the more likely people with sensitivities will be sensitive to one or more ingredients. Some of us can't use "ordinary" ingredients like lanolin, alcohol or aromatics like camphor, which is cooling and smells nice, but can be irritating.
So we've created Bee Serious salve. Partly out of selfishness--the creator struggled with sensitive, cracked and painful hands for 30 years. Bee Serious cured her. Her hands are smooth and soft and healed. Bee Serious has an oil, a wax and essential oils. That's it. It works. If your hands overreact to soaps, dust, housework or gardening, if your skin cracks and hurts, try Bee Serious. Seriously.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Medway Candle Bath Salts
If you're looking for a last-minute gift that's personal but not presumptuous, bath salts scented with essential oils are inexpensive, thoughtful and gorgeous. We put 'em in embroidered satin and organza bags; you can have them in the ever-popular lavender or orange, with bergamot and petitgrain. You'll see them at the Nova Scotia farmers' markets in Lunenburg, Mahone Bay and Hubbards--and at occasional fund-raisers like the one we did Saturday at the Chester Area Middle School (CAMS).
Epsom salts help restore levels of magnesium and do all kinds of good things for your body, because they're absorbed through the skin when you bathe. For the whole scoop, check out this link to the Epsom Salts Council
http://www.epsomsaltcouncil.org/about_better_health_through_soaking.htm
Epsom salts help restore levels of magnesium and do all kinds of good things for your body, because they're absorbed through the skin when you bathe. For the whole scoop, check out this link to the Epsom Salts Council
http://www.epsomsaltcouncil.org/about_better_health_through_soaking.htm
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Our 100% Pure Beeswax Candles
Medway Candle beeswax candle are all-beeswax, and that's a big deal. Candles with as little as 10% beeswax can be labeled "beeswax"--and too often are! If your "beeswax" candles aren't labeled "100% beeswax" they may contain large amounts of other waxes. Candles that aren't all-beeswax burn faster, drip and smoke. 100% pure beeswax candles should burn 4-5 times slower than paraffin.
We also use 100% cotton or paper wicks (depending on the type of candle), ordered from a reputable supplier. Our beeswax comes from a large honey producer whose harvest includes golden blocks of filtered beeswax. Mike hand-dips 7, 8 and 9-inch tapers (and other sizes by custom order), working late into the night by the heat of a Black Bear woodstove while he listens to jazz.
Votives, tea lights, hearts in two sizes and pillars are poured by hand into metal molds, allowed to cool, then removed from the molds and hand-finished. For ordering information or price lists, send us a comment on this blog; we'll get back to you within a day.
Breaking News: Our website is coming soon!
We also use 100% cotton or paper wicks (depending on the type of candle), ordered from a reputable supplier. Our beeswax comes from a large honey producer whose harvest includes golden blocks of filtered beeswax. Mike hand-dips 7, 8 and 9-inch tapers (and other sizes by custom order), working late into the night by the heat of a Black Bear woodstove while he listens to jazz.
Votives, tea lights, hearts in two sizes and pillars are poured by hand into metal molds, allowed to cool, then removed from the molds and hand-finished. For ordering information or price lists, send us a comment on this blog; we'll get back to you within a day.
Breaking News: Our website is coming soon!
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