People sometimes ask what a typical day looks like when you make candles for a living. The honest answer is that no two days are quite the same - but most of them start the same way, with breakfast and a look at what needs to be poured.
Here's what a real working day in the Three Trees studio actually looks like, from first light to the last order packed.
Morning: preparation
Before anything gets poured, the studio gets set up. That means checking orders from the previous evening, pulling together what needs to be made that day, and getting the wax on to melt.
While the wax is melting, the moulds get prepared. For sculptural candles this means checking each mould carefully - any residue from a previous pour needs to be cleaned out completely, because even a small amount of old wax can affect how cleanly the new candle releases. Wicks get positioned and held in place. Everything gets laid out in the order it'll be needed.
Mid-morning: the pour
When the wax reaches the right temperature - and temperature matters enormously, both for how the fragrance binds and how the finished surface looks - the fragrance oil goes in. This is the part that looks simple and isn't. Too cool and the fragrance doesn't incorporate properly. Too hot and it burns off before the candle sets. The window is narrower than you'd expect.
For scented candles in jars and tins, the wax goes straight into the vessel. For sculptural candles, it goes into the mould and then the waiting begins. Soy wax takes time to set properly - longer than paraffin, and more sensitive to the temperature of the room. A cold studio in winter means slower setting and a different surface finish to a warm studio in summer. You learn to adjust.
The first pour is rarely the last. Soy wax contracts slightly as it cools, which means the top of a candle will often sink a little in the centre and need a small top-up pour once the first has set. It's a detail most customers never notice, but skipping it produces a finished candle that looks uneven and unprofessional. The top-up pour is one of those invisible steps that separates a well-made candle from one that's merely adequate.
Lunchtime: the in-between
There's a natural pause built into candle making that doesn't exist in many other crafts - the waiting time while things set. Experienced candle makers learn to use this productively. Orders get packed. Labels get applied. The website gets updated, or a photograph gets taken, or a message gets replied to.
It's also when the studio gets tidied between pours, which matters more than it might seem. Wax has a way of getting everywhere if you're not careful, and a cluttered workspace leads to cluttered results.
Afternoon: demoulding and quality checking
This is the part of the day that never gets old. When a sculptural candle comes out of its mould cleanly - when the details are crisp and the finish is smooth and the shape is exactly what it was supposed to be - there's a satisfaction to it that's genuinely hard to replicate.
When it doesn't come out cleanly, it goes back to the beginning. We don't sell candles with significant imperfections - with the exception of our sale section, where candles with minor cosmetic issues find a home at a reduced price. Everything else has to meet the same standard before it goes out, regardless of how long the pour took or how many attempts it required.
Each candle gets checked for surface finish, wick position, scent strength, and overall appearance. The ones that pass get labelled and set aside for packing. The ones that don't get noted - what went wrong, why, what to adjust next time.
Late afternoon: packing and dispatch
Orders from the day get packed in the afternoon. Every candle gets wrapped carefully - not just because it protects the product in transit, but because the unboxing experience matters. A candle that arrives looking like it was thrown into a box doesn't feel like a considered purchase, regardless of how good it is. A candle that arrives neatly presented, ready to give or to keep, feels like something worth having.
Packing is also the moment when the day's work becomes real. A stack of orders ready to go out represents real people who chose to spend their money here rather than anywhere else, and that never stops feeling like something worth taking seriously.
Evening: what comes next
The end of a studio day rarely means the end of a working day. There are new scent combinations to test, new shapes to consider, social media to tend to, and the particular kind of thinking that only happens when you're doing something else entirely - washing up, walking, sitting in the garden under the oak and the pine and the eucalyptus, turning over an idea that might become the next candle.
Small-batch making is like that. The studio hours are only part of it. The rest happens in the margins, in the small hours, in the gap between one pour and the next.
It's a lot of work for what is, at its heart, a very nice candle.
But it's the right kind of work. And on the days when everything pours correctly and sets cleanly and comes out of the mould exactly as intended, it's hard to imagine doing anything else.
Want to see the studio in action? Follow us on Instagram where we share the process as it happens. And if you'd like to try the results, browse the full collection here.