LeahFounder

About Leah

The long story behind CandleEasy.

This is the part that doesn’t fit on the home page — the late nights, the notebooks, the blends that didn’t work, and the moment I decided to build the thing I couldn’t find.

If you make candles, I think a lot of it will sound familiar.

Read my story

Where it started

My background is in graphic design, promotion and marketing — the world of how things look, and how they find the people they’re meant for. Candles came later, and they surprised me.

I first got curious about candle making in December 2019. By 2020, with the pandemic keeping me at home, I was making them, and I fell for all of it — the scents, the textures, the quiet satisfaction of a perfectly smooth pour. It was the kind of craft that made the hours disappear.

My very first candle was a disaster — it came out smelling burnt. I didn’t mind; I was hooked, and I wanted to understand why.

What I didn’t expect was how much of candle making happens away from the wax: in research, in records, in numbers, and in waiting.

Two of Leah’s first candles seen from above — one in a speckled blue jar, one lit in an amber jar — beside a red glass dish and green foil-wrapped chocolates. — Some of my very first candles.

Blending scents that were my own

I didn’t want to pour the same scents as everyone else. I wanted blends that were mine. So my table filled up with fragrance oil bottles, and I weighed every test blend on a little scale.

The hard part was never the weighing. It was not knowing whether two oils would actually work together until the candle was poured, cured and burning — long after I’d already bought the oils. Every blend was a small bet, and a failed one cost me oil, wax and weeks of waiting.

A table covered with fragrance oil bottles, seen from above. — Fragrance oils waiting to be blended.

A small glass beaker of fragrance oil on a digital scale. — Weighing a test blend.

Countless nights hunting for suppliers

I spent countless nights searching for suppliers. Who carries this exact wax? Who has that wick? Is this the same product under a different name? Every answer lived on a different website, and every search started from scratch.

Those were hours I wanted to spend making candles. Instead, I spent them in browser tabs.

Waxes, wicks and containers

Online, it was a maze: wax options, wick types and fragrance names that meant nothing to me yet. Every wax behaves differently — some left soot on the glass. So does every wick, and every container. Change one and the whole candle changes — the melt pool, the flame, the throw.

I went through 28 different waxes and about 30 wick types. It was a nightmare. Every choice meant another round of testing, and every round meant more notes to keep.

A candle burning in an amber jar. — Another test burn.

The burn tests — and the notebooks

Then came the testing. My kitchen and living room turned into a test lab, and burn after burn, I wrote everything down. Notebooks for formulas. Separate sheets for burn tests. Mental math at every pour. It felt like 35 million notebooks.

My notes were confusing, and sometimes they were simply wrong. When I needed an answer — which wick, which ratio, how did that tester burn? — it was somewhere in that pile. I couldn’t stay consistent, and I knew my candles deserved better.

A burning candle seen from above, with a burn test log sheet underneath. — A burn test, with its log sheet.

Hand-labelled candle testers burning on a shelf. — Testers on the shelf, labelled by hand.

My perfect candle

After three years of testing — all those waxes, wicks and notebooks — it finally happened: I poured the candle I’d been chasing. One that burned clean, and that I’d happily breathe in at home. I took it to event booths, and the best part wasn’t the first sale — it was watching people come back. They’d pick up two, three at a time. It felt amazing.

Amber candle jars labelled Ceremonial Matcha, Vanilla Bean Latte, Morning Jungle Mist and Boba Milk Tea on a market booth stand, with two dessert-topped candles and a care card. — My candles at a market booth.

Rows of amber candle jars with scent names like Pistachio Latte and London Fog Latte on a market booth table, with a care card. — Another market day.

The day the wax ran out

Then a big custom order arrived, and I didn’t have enough wax to fill it. Only one supplier carried my wax — and, of course, it was out of stock.

In the same stretch, the fragrance oils I loved most, the ones that performed beautifully, were discontinued. Everything my candle depended on disappeared at once. It was heartbreaking.

Starting over

So I started again, with a full rebrand. This time I wanted to explore — to source different waxes and different fragrances instead of relying on just one of each. The ideas came flooding back too: names, labels, the look and feel I wanted, scribbled wherever there was space.

Today I work with about 18 waxes, and my fragrance oils have quietly taken over my living room.

Three lit candles in decorative holders in front of a framed painting. — Candles at home.

I needed help — so I built it

With that many waxes and oils in play, I needed something firm but simple: an easy way to create recipes, run my tests and keep the admin in order. Instead I was juggling a different tool for every task, and none of them talked to each other. The craft I loved was getting buried under paperwork.

I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Then, somewhere along the way, AI arrived in my world. I started small — simple, everyday things — mostly just to find my way around it.

And then an idea took hold: why not use it to build the tool I kept wishing for, one that would streamline my testing? So I began building it myself, one piece at a time, for my own bench — the formulas, the burn tests, the fragrance scan, the supplier library, the calculators.

To fast-forward a little: what started as help for my own bench grew into something I wanted to share. That’s how CandleEasy was born — the studio I always wished I had, now open to every candle maker who has felt the same.

A preview of the CandleEasy app’s welcome dashboard: a sidebar menu, the greeting “Sophia, what are you working on today?”, counters for batches, tests, inventory, recipes, curing testers and scanned blends, a shelf of tool tiles, and panels for inventory and recent activity. — A peek inside CandleEasy — work in progress, not the final version.

The CandleEasy Design Studio: a new candle formula laid out as connected step cards — Vessel, Wax, Fragrance, Extras, Pour math and Wick — with “Choose vessel” as the next step. — Design Studio — a candle formula, built one step at a time.

You love making candles, not juggling spreadsheets or searching for supplies. I built CandleEasy to help you find suppliers, blend fragrances, save recipes, track burn tests, and see your costs in one place—so you can spend more time creating, whether your candles are for you, gifts, or your business.

Leah, Founder of CandleEasy

From my bench to yours

Every part of CandleEasy started as a struggle of mine.

Countless nights searching for a supplier

The rules CandleEasy is built on.

Craft comes first.

Get the candle right, and selling it with confidence follows.

Your formulas are yours.

Your recipes, testers and notes belong to your account alone.

Honest over impressive.

When the real answer is “it depends on your wax”, CandleEasy says so — and tells you what to test.

The wax has the last word.

Every scan and calculation is a starting point. Pour it, burn it, and trust your own nose.

Come make candles with me.

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