We will be offering this scent online and at shows as well as in select stores. Production & delivery will begin mid-April. We are already offering this scent in a unique size that we are bringing to our online customers. Our “Baby” line is a handpicked selection of our popular scents poured into baby food jars. These candles hold slightly more wax than our beer bottle candles, 3.5 ounces to be exact and burn for about 24 hours. These make great baby shower gifts. Diapers and baby wipes are great, but a relaxing baby themed candle for the mother is an excellent unique choice. 100% soy wax & essential oils, and as always made from all natural and recycled materials, right down to the cotton wick.

Baby Jardin is the first candle from our “Baby” line and is currently available in our Etsy store.

Spring is just around the corner, and with that comes spring weddings! Outdoor weddings are very popular this time of year and every bride is trying to come up with the most unique ideas to set her wedding and reception apart from everyone else’s. That is where Green Illuminations can help!

Above are a few displays from wedding events that we have helped provide lighting solutions for. On the left is a basic lighting set up, in the middle are tealight holders created from our popular wine bottle tumblers, and to the right is a luminary set dressed up by the bride to match her decor and pull her entire theme together.

Our luminaries are great centerpieces for receptions, especially when you dress them up to make them uniquely yours. If you’re having your wedding in a well wooded area, our wine bottle lanterns make perfect lighting options to provide a unique experience for your guests.

We offer bulk discounts & rental options for weddings, contact us for more details.

This being our first full holiday season, we did go into it a bit blindly. I did know that we were completely unprepared. Due to our growth over 2011 we were struggling to keep our stores filled and happy.

Oddly the weekend of Black Friday, Small Business Sunday and Cyber Monday left us with no online orders, I thought online shopping for us was going to turn out to be a bust, but as soon as December hit the online orders started rolling in from all over the country. It was very exciting and we did our best to accommodate and personalize each other as requested.

As of Sunday, December 18th we stopped guaranteeing delivery by Christmas and orders have slowed and we’ve finally been able to catch a break. I think Jarod and I will both be relaxing and taking some time to recharge our batteries over the next few weeks and then we’ll begin working ahead for the Spring season as well as getting our retailers fully stocked.

Speaking of retailers, we now have a special page set up just for them if you’re truly waiting to do that last minute shopping!

We’ve also begun offering our 5oz. wine bottle candles in limited quantities online and those have been a major hit over the holiday season. So continue to look for those online as well as at our booths. We currently do not plan to stock many stores with them in 2012 as our bottle supply is limited.

Thanks for your support, enjoy time with your family and friends over the next few weeks. We’ll catch you in 2012!

Many people are turned off to buying soy candles because of their cost.  While it is true that soy candles are more expensive, soy actually burns slower and cooler than paraffin candles, which helps to alleviate some of this cost.  In addition to this, many companies use wicks with zinc or lead in them.  This metal helps the wick to stay firm and actually makes it burn hotter, burning up both the oil and the wax more quickly.  In addition to this, zinc and lead are released into the air and inhaled by you, your children, your pets…even your plants!

Speaking of plants, I wanted to explain why we hold so strongly to the idea of having only essential oils in our candles.  Often times, people ask us if we have scents such as apple pie or vanilla sugar.  Occasionally, they are turned off by our response that we do not.  This is because scents such as those are not natural or plant derived.  Some fragrance oils contain a certain amount of natural oils, but many of them are made in a laboratory.  If you’ve ever read “Fast Food Nation,” you may recall the chapter about how McDonalds and other restaurants have been known to add various man-made scents to their food to make them more enticing.  These man-made scents are just chemicals that your nose responds to make you believe that you are smelling something that isn’t necessarily there.  Using 100% essential oils in our candles limits the types of scents that we can make, but it also allows us to be 100% natural, something that Green Illuminations really believes in strongly.

Not only are essential oils all-natural, they also have aroma therapeutic values to them.  For example, lavender in fragrance oil form doesn’t necessarily relax you.  But the essential oil lavender has the ability to calm and soothe your body.  This is because the make-up of the essential oils contains chemicals that your body naturally reacts to.

Green Illuminations can truly say that our candles are 100% natural and good for you.  They smell amazing and they help to improve your mood.  They also help the earth by not using petroleum to make candles and releasing harmful chemicals back into the environment.  We do all of this so that our customers know that they are contributing to a greener, healthier world while enjoying the scents that nature has created.  And, at the price-point that we sell our candles at ($7 for a 3 oz. candle that lasts 20-24 hours), it is a great buy, too.  Keeping the candles natural and the cost down is not an easy task, but we feel that it is the right thing to do.  We only wish that more companies would consider doing the same!

Adding to the holiday craziness we have been and will be featured in several local publications, most notably in October we were featured in the IndyStar’s Living section, which was a huge honor and accomplishment for us considering how long we’ve been in business.

Over the next few weeks we will begin an early roll out of our holiday/winter scents. These are the same popular scents from last year; Montecorvino and Ymir. If you are unfamiliar with these scents Monte is our most popular and combines cinnamon and cedarwood to remind you of an evening around the fire at a log cabin. Ymir is crisp and clean combining peppermint with frankincense for that perfect holiday smell.

Also for the holidays we have introduced our 8′ wine cork garland which has been flying off our e-shelves in our Etsy shop! Get one before they’re all gone!

Enjoy Thanksgiving with friends, family and loved ones. We hope to see you at a show this holiday season!

Regardless of our growth, we’re still learning the ropes! Online sales are still a bit of a mystery and after the holiday season passes this year, we’ll be looking into more ways to grow them as a ‘winter break’ sets in.

One arena we are dipping our toes into is holiday items, not only for the upcoming Christmas season, but Halloween as well. Which just happens to be one of my all time favorite holidays. Maybe it’s that orange is my favorite color, or that my birthday is just two weeks prior. We have two great items this year for Halloween, the first is a new limited edition 5oz wine bottle candle called “Bläck”.

Interestingly “Bläck” was originally intended to be a summer scent, it is composed of two essential oils, basil & sage. Amongest a small test group in late spring men seemed to really love it, it was spicy and seemed like a perfect scent for kitchens. However, upon a second test group it was pointed out that the combo was very familiar… it turns out that the smell was just like black licorice! So we held onto that one until now, so if you’re a fan of black licorice this scent is for you! We’re selling it exclusively on our Etsy store.

Another great item we are featuring for Halloween is amber apothecary elixir bottles with custom labels created by Green Illuminations! These are also upcycled! Our essential oils are shipped and stored in these amber bottles. Over the course of the year we’ve saved them and are turning them into these create decor items for your home this season. These are also limited to the amount of bottles we have in stock. Once they are gone we won’t have more until next season! Check them out on our Etsy store!

If you haven’t taken a moment to sign up for our mailing list, I encourage you to do so now. We send out no more than one email a month and it will keep you up to date on new items, like the ones featured above, as well as upcoming shows and sales!

We were certainly glad to have the extra time to spend with friends and travel, but it’s equally exciting to get back into the swing of things.

Over the summer we managed to completely zero out all of our inventory on candles and lanterns which gives us a nice launching point to get into the autumn. We filled lots of custom orders from friends, family, and online customers. We saw a slight uptick in online sales which was great. We love knowing that our products are reaching far and wide.

We also began selling in a fifth Indianapolis area location! Salon 6 now carries our full candle line, lanterns and exclusive scent made just for them called “Six” which contains lavender, ylang ylang and rosewood. It’s amazing! And Salon 6 is the only place you will find it! Make sure to stop in next time you’re in the Broad Ripple area as all proceeds from sales go to ChildHelp, a great organization that the stylists at Salon 6 care greatly about.

It wasn’t all fun and games this summer, aside from fulfilling orders online and for friends and family, we also were busy deciding on what might be the most important scents of the year, FALL! We’ll be announcing those to you very soon! We also booked out our fall and early winter schedule to round out the year. It’s a long list of events, and as always you can find it on our front page. Green Illuminations products make great gifts for the holidays if you’re shopping ahead of time!

Looking forward to seeing you at a show very soon!

This past weekend we ended up in a unique position that we weren’t prepared for. Two shows at the same time! We had already been signed up for months to attend the Fishers Freedom Festival, but a week before the show we were contacted by the shopkeepers at Homespun Indy to work a booth in front of their shop on the same Saturday. Initially we turned it down because we do not have the equipment yet to run two shows at once (although we’ve discussed it) but after some gentle nudging we decided it was a good opportunity.

I ran the Homespun booth. It was makeshift but in my opinion, even more awesome than our every day booth. You can see the photo to the right. The table, tent, and covering were provided by Homespun and I brought small quantities of part of our line and sold out of several things during the course of the day. I’m glad we did not miss out on this, it was a well attended event by people ready to buy and in half the time made more sales than Jarod was making in Fishers. And although our booth usually has a “zen” feel, I brought along some of my well-growing succulents to help spruce up the booth. They received lots of compliments. I feel you can’t go wrong with live plants at your booth, most people don’t have those types of “extras” and can really bring your items to life.

Fishers turned out to be an okay show, but was very family oriented and mostly people browsing to kill time. Lots of people, but slow sales. We spent nearly 24 hours at the booth over the course of two days, it was exhausting and thankfully we had decent weather.

Our next officially booked show isn’t until the end of August. In the mean time we will be working to fill several custom orders that we’ve been holding on until we had the time. And as always the online shop is open and ready for you to order!

From the beginning we saw our items as great ideas for weddings as decorations and as gifts.

For a summer outdoor wedding we provided twenty of our hanging wine bottle lanterns to add the perfect ambiance to an outdoor reception. Most recently we have begun putting together an order for 20 wine bottle table top luminaries for a reception as well as several dozen 3oz. beer bottle candles that the bride and groom will be giving to their out of town guests upon arrival. Their wedding has a unique twist of using many recycled products and as their out of town guests arrive it will be a nice intro to the weekends theme.

Because of the quantity ordered for both of these weddings we were able to provide discounted rates. We know weddings can get expensive and are more than willing to work with you on something that will make everyone happy!

Our summer scents are currently being produced and I will be photographing them very soon and getting them on the website and Etsy for everyone to see and purchase. Make sure to stop by our booth at one of our upcoming shows to smell our summer scents!