Rosmerta's Cauldron is closing

After a good deal of thought, I have decided that it is no longer sustainable to keep the Rosmerta's Cauldron Artfire shop running. This is due to a multitude of factors.

Firstly, it is very expensive to host a shop with Artfire, around £12.00 a month is debited from my bank account. This is spare money that I do not have. I am a disabled person living under a Conservative government who have already killed tens of thousands of us and are implementing further cuts. Spending £12.00 a month just to host a shop is not viable in the long term.

Secondly, my incurable pain is gradually worsening, the mere idea of pouring a pan of wax is an intolerable one right now. I like to think that I will still make occasional candles as gifts, but I honestly don't know.

Thirdly, there are only a couple of key points during the year at which sales really happen, due to the widespread need for gifts at those times. Bearing in mind that I make no profit from this, it is really not worth continuing to host an Artfire shop year-round because of the sporadic contribution to charity that I will be able to make when sales do happen.

I have considered transferring to Etsy, which is somewhat cheaper when paying on a per-listing basis, but the fact remains that I do not feel physically capable of continuing to make candles. Custom orders are now closed, and I will have to keep paying to host the Artfire page until the stock in my cupboard is sold. I made 78 sales in 4 years so I like to think it wasn't a waste. It is a great shame to stop but I hope you will all continue to support Assistance Dogs.

Changes to Artfire

My shop is hosted on Artfire, which has just undergone some changes.

Old shop.

New shop.

The new site design is intended to be more responsive to customers on mobile devices. The new banner is apparently temporary, and while I won't be able to use the old banner made by my friend again, I will apparently be able to change it to a product image.

It's a bit of a shame that the customisation is lost, especially as I managed to match the font on this blog to the one on the shop. But hopefully shoppers will find the new layout easy to work with.


It would have been nice to see some other changes from Artfire, namely, drop-down option lists for items so that people can choose colour, scent etc. for place-holder listings. At the moment I rely on people contacting me after purchase or using my somewhat complicated custom form to tell me exactly what they want, and a lot of them don't actually get around to doing that.


It would have also been nice to see the currency situation sorted out. Even though I and most of my customers view my shop from England, prices have been displaying in US dollars for some time. This has lead to a noticeable drop in interest, as shoppers see the $ sign and assume they would have to have the item shipped all the way from America.

This is apparently due to an issue with Google Shopping, but I have heard that Etsy feeds to Google Shopping and still lets prices appear in the local currency for the viewer.

I hope that the currency issue will eventually be fixed, and it would also be nice to be able to enter prices in £ in the first place, rather than awkwardly converting to $ to see the £ price I actually want.

With any luck we'll be able to have drop-down menus on item listings too, eventually.

A candle from set #3 for Canine Partners, featuring appliqué logo.

Charity candle sets now available

The prices of these candle sets will be donated to the wonderful charity Canine Partners. If someone has an illness or disability which makes it painful or impossible to perform certain tasks, Canine Partners can train a dog to change that person's life. The dogs can help to press crossing buttons, post letters, pick up dropped items and help get laundry in and out of the washing machine.

These candle sets are in the charity's signature colours of purple and white

Set #1

Fits inside garden lanterns.

• A handmade pillar candle, the size of a Pringles tube, with zig-zags of white on one side, and purple on the other.

• A pillar with angled stripes of purple and white, which are alternately scented with chocolate and butterscotch candies.

• A swirl candle with zig-zags of white and purple.

• A heart-shaped candle, with lovely alternately-scented stripes of purple and white.

• A small jar candle with purple chunks surrounded by white wax.

• A jar candle, striped with white and gradually darkening shades of purple.

Set #2

• A handmade heart in a lovely shade of purple.

• A mini jar, with purple chunks surrounded by white wax.

• A clear gel candle with angled folds of purple, includes silver pebbles and seashells.

• A reverse of the usual chunk candle, featuring white chunks surrounded by purple. A white wax seashell sits at the top of the jar.

• A pillar candle with horizontal, alternately-scented stripes of purple and white.

• A beautiful six-pointed star pillar, with angled stripes of white and purple

Set #3

• A large, five-wick block candle in a lovely shade of purple, featuring the charity's logo in silver appliqué!

• A swirl candle, with alternately-scented stripes of purple and white.

• A purple gel candle in a square glass, with silver pebbles and seashells.

• A gel candle with striped layers of purple and clear wax, with added seashells and silver pebbles.

• A large jar candle, scented with butterscotch candies, white wax around purple seashell shapes, with three purple wax seashells at the top of the candle.

• A very unique pillar candle, white wax around four rods of vertical purple wax, which is exposed at various points along the sides and top.

Canine Partners

I am delighted to announce that the funds from the sales of purple colour candles from Rosmerta's Cauldron, will now go in their entirety to the wonderful charity Canine Partners.

You can see the page that will keep track of the donations from these sales, here.


The prices of red-coloured candles are still being donated to Dog A.I.D.
They are not on JustGiving and so rather than having a page to document the donations, I will send the donation receipt to you.

For all other colour options of candle, you can choose which charity the proceeds go to. You could order a stock listing from the shop, a completely custom candle via the request form, or an existing item from its listing on Artfire.

Why buy from Rosmerta's Cauldron?

There is nothing wrong with big candle companies producing lots of identical, general-purpose candles for shop shelves.
But when it comes to gifts or candles lit with particular purpose, handmade candles crafted by an independent chandler are a great choice.

When you buy a Rosmerta's Cauldron candle, you are not lining my pockets, so to speak. I could never physically produce enough candles to pay my bills, even if I had the demand. Items have their proceeds, or sometimes their whole price, donated to Assistance Dog charities. This is Dog A.I.D. by default, but you can choose another charity to direct funds to if you wish.

It is a small contribution each time, but it all adds up, and by selling candles I contribute to the process of training a dog to help a disabled person live an independent life. You, too, contribute by being the purchaser of the candle.

I purchase my wax directly from a supplier and make concious choices about things like burn time and scent throw. During tests I've found that my jar candles burn for between four and five days and nights when continuously lit (a customer should of course only keep a candle lit for four hours at a time). My candles will last you a very long time; imagine how much use out of them you will get if you only light them on a weekday evening or at weekends, for example.
I use cleaned, repurposed glass jars from my own kitchen to make my jar candles. You could reuse the jar again after burning the candle. The only waste products resulting from my candle production are excess wick trimmings (which I will try to reuse in another candle if they are long enough) and sticker backings.

When you buy a Rosmerta's Cauldron candle, you give me a sense of purpose and something to do with my time. I am disabled and spend most of my time flat on my back either in bed or on the sofa. When I have the energy to thread wick through tabs and mix colour into a pan of wax, I gain an immeasurable sense of happiness. I love being a chandler, even if it is in the loosest of senses.
Making candles allows me to use my brain and be creative, and come up with products that are visually appealing as well as functional.

If nothing on my Artfire-hosted shop is quite what you need, you have the choice of ordering a custom candle! You can choose your wax, wick, colours, scents, type of container or shape, and in the comments box you can make a specific request, such as for me to stripe the colours or make an angled candle.

I put a great deal of love and care into my products and would not send off anything to a customer that I would not be happy to receive and use myself. I am mindful of every millilitre of poured wax.
Each candle is individual and you could never have the same one twice. Even candles made in batches of similar products are individually unique to each other, they will all have their little quirks and variances, and this is the appeal of buying something that has been made by hand.

Click here to visit my Artfire shop. I ship from England and a PayPal account is all you need.

Multicolour container candles

In the same colour combination as my multicoloured pillar and shaped candles, I have created five unique candles in recycled glass jars. Container wax is much softer and throws scent around the room very well. The layers of colour are scented with "Butterscotch Candies" and "Coffee Caramel Cream," one after the other.

Two wicks.

Like the previous multicolour candles, these were very fun to make. However, it is trickier to lean jars to dry at angles, due to the nature of the way that the wick is inserted. The wick tab may be caused to fall from its position by the hot wax, thus producing a wonky burn later on. I managed to recentralise the wicks for these angled candles, but it is not a process I relish completing again, and so in the future, multicoloured candles made using container wax, will be made only in stripes and not at angles.

All of these candles are available from the online shop; payment is via PayPal.

The creation process.

Remember that when you buy a Rosmerta's Cauldron candle, either some or all of the price money is donated to Assistance Dog charities, to give disabled people more independent lives.

An Assistance Dog gives a dropped object to its owner.

Multicoloured candles

I recently tried my hand at some new creations, in the form of multicoloured candles. These are very different to chunk candles; instead of pre-made cubes of wax being deposited into a mould and having new wax of a different colour poured around them, each colour is poured one after the other (after the previous colour has of course been given time to solidify), and the mould is leaned at different angles so that the colours set in various directions.

These have certainly been some of the most enjoyable candles for me to make. The large pillar candles are made by reusing old Pringles tubes, and piercing a hole in the bottom of the canister in which to thread the wick.

I tried the same method with the swirl candle mould and the heart candle mould.

I chose the colours of white, turquoise, orange, green and purple to combine in the candles. As these are not all particularly similar colours, I thought their starkness in comparison to each other would produce an interesting effect.

All of these very unique candles are scented with "Butterscotch Candies" oil (think along the lines of the smell of Werther's), and are currently available from the Rosmerta's Cauldron online shop on Artfire. An Artfire account is not required to make purchases.



Remember that when you buy a Rosmerta's Cauldron candle, either some or all of the price money is donated to Assistance Dog charities, to give disabled people more independent lives.

An Assistance Dog picks up a dropped object.