Celebrate Your Special Occasion with a Fragrant Keepsake from Yankee Candle!

On the Sunday after Easter my daughter will be celebrating her First Holy Communion. We've been planning for this day all year and my sister just gave me the little lace dress her daughter wore last year. It's the same dress worn by each of my sisters and me when we received the same sacrament so many years ago. After all this time, it still looks as sweet as it did when we wore it and I was delighted that it fit my daughter to a "t" when she tried it on. I curled her hair and posed her with lace gloves and a set of rosary beads, snapping a few pictures of her before I let her change into more comfortable clothes for an afternoon of playing Barbies. In looking at the photo, I realized that I'd really captured a special moment in time - a moment in which my childhood and my daughter's merge into one very special day steeped in tradition. To commemorate this occasion, I'm ordering Candle Expressions™: candles in the scent that I choose with my photograph on the label. It will be a day we'll long remember and this personalized candle will be the perfect keepsake for the event!


Celebrate your special occasion with a fragrant keepsake from Yankee Candle®. Candle Expressions™ custom photo label candles are available for just a $1 upgrade to the cost of the candle! Visit our website for complete details.

Yankee Candle Fragrance Mixology

Like the best celebrity chefs, Yankee Candle fans love to mix their own recipes. They may take a little fruit, add some spice, and perhaps a touch of sweetness and voila! They get a scent unlike any other - their own custom home fragrance. At Yankee Candle we call it Fragrance Mixology, but you can call it the finishing touch that makes an ordinary event extraordinary!

To create your custom scent, think of it in terms of taste - what flavors go well together? If you have a little sour, you probably need a little sweet to balance it. The headiness of a floral might be tempered nicely by a fresh scent. Once you've thought about what might make a nice blend, it's time to shop for the fragrances! Narrow down your choice to 2 or 3 scents that sound like they’ll go well together and you can have fun experimenting. If you use Tarts® wax potpourri, you can break them into pieces and add a little of each into the bowl of the warmer until you get the aroma that you like. (Be careful not to add too many pieces, you don’t want melted wax to drip out of the warmer!) If you use Samplers® votive candles, you can either use several holders throughout your entertaining space or you can buy a unique clover shaped holder at www.yankeecandle.com that will allow you to burn 3 votives together. Once you're a master mixologist, you could even try blending scents with non-candle forms such as warming oils, or even using a candle in one fragrance and a reed in another. The scents will mix as they waft through the air.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Spiced Orange + Cranberry Chutney + Vineyard® = Autumn Harvest
• Creamy Caramel + Buttercream® + Fireside™ = Campfire Marshmallow
• Patchouli + Spiced Pumpkin = Witches' Parlor

You can see that the possibilities are endless – truly limited only by your own imagination. Have fun and let me know what custom scent you create!

How to Create Your Own Custom Yankee Candle® Scent

A favorite activity among candle fans is creating their own custom blend with Tarts® wax potpourri. Dubbed Fragrance Mixology™ by the Yankee Candle Company, this kind of DIY home fragrance is two parts art and one part science. It's sort of Iron Chef meets Bill Nye the Science Guy! For the artistic part, mixologists need to know which fragrances would make a great blend. Would you try mixing Coconut Bay™ and Midsummer's Night®? What about Honeydew Melon and Storm Watch®? Just as different foods will bring out different tastes when combined, different scents will also bring out the best (or the worst) in each other. Once you decide on the combo, you need to determine how much of each fragrance to combine. That's the science part. Do you make each part equal, or would you rather have more of one scent shine through? Through trial and error, mixologists will come up with just the right recipe and then don their artistic cap again to craft the perfect - and perfectly clever - name for their creation.

Fragrance mixologist extraordinaire Leigh Silas Hanrihan catalogued all of the recipes tried in the test kitchens of Yankee Candle® fans around the world and posted them on this website:

http://candlemixarchive.weebly.com/ .

The next time you want to provide just the right fragrance for your home, have fun developing your own custom blend!

Fragrance Layering

Fragrance layering is a term that has been used by beauty and fragrance companies for years. Women and men alike have been educated in applying their personal scents in multiple layers: bath and shower gels, shaving and body lotions, powders and colognes. What many people don't know is that you can layer your home fragrance, too! Start by deciding whether you want to layer a single fragrance, or create your home's custom scent by introducing complimentary fragrances. Once you've determined that, you can mix both passive and active fragrance forms until you find the strength you desire.

Here's what I do. I start with the season and select a fragrance that matches my seasonal decor. Right now I'm yearning for summer so my scents are Beach Walk™ and Sun & Sand™. I use an Electric fragrancer in an outlet near my door so that I get a whiff of my favorite scent as soon as I come home. Then I put a bowl of Sun & Sand™ potpourri in my foyer and a Beach Walk™ fragranced reed - in that beautiful Signature bottle - in my living room. All of these are products that fragrance the home around the clock so they add a great base layer of scent. Then, when I know I'll be home for a while I light candles to add that powerful punch and beautiful ambient glow. Fragrance layering - it's my favorite way to make a statement in my home!

SET THE MOOD WITH A CUSTOM SCENT!

Want to know a secret to the success of all those red carpet events and lavish Hollywood parties? Celebrity party planners create the mood with custom scents developed especially for the occasion. The real secret is that you can do the same thing in your own home just by blending different candle scents.

At Yankee Candle we call it Fragrance Mixology, but you can call it the finishing touch that makes an ordinary event extraordinary!

To create your custom scent, you’ll first need to think about the theme for your occasion and then shop for fragrances that reinforce that theme. Once you’ve narrowed down your choice to 2 or 3 scents that sound like they’ll go well together you can have fun experimenting. If you use Tarts® wax potpourri, you can break them into pieces and add a little of each into the bowl of the warmer until you get the aroma that you like. (Be careful not to add too many pieces, you don’t want melted wax to drip out of the warmer!) If you use Samplers® votive candles, you can either use several holders throughout your entertaining space or you can buy a unique clover shaped holder at http://www.yankeecandle.com/ that will allow you to burn 3 votives together. You could even try blending scents with non-candle forms such as using a candle in one fragrance and an electric plug-in in another. The scents will mix as they waft through the air.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• For a Girl's Night, try an Appletini: Pineapple Cilantro + MacIntosh
• For a Baby Shower, try the scent of a New Born: Tahitian Tiare Flower + Baby Powder
• For a Sunday Brunch, try Wake Me Up: Café Au Lait + Cinnamon & Sugar + Hazelnut Coffee
  

You can see that the possibilities are endless – truly limited only by your own imagination. Have fun and let me know what custom scent you create!