Jam Jar Tealights – the wait is over

Back in March I blogged about Joost’s Melbourne Greenhouse and our pure beeswax Jam Jar Tealights which lit the way – the second eco love child of our long term collaboration with Joost.  We’ve been inundated with requests for them ever since, but it took until now for them to get to the top of the list of things for us to do.

So (drum roll) it is with great delight that we announce the launch of our Jam Jar tealights.  The story of Joost’s life – bucket loads of great ideas focused on sustainability (+ an obsession with jam jars) and the need for people to execute.  The story of my life – the love of execution (+ an obsession for beeswax candles that burn perfectly).  It’s a match made in heaven.

Queen B beeswax Jam Jar tealight candles

Each pack contains 2 x Glass Jam Jars + 8 pure beeswax tealight candles (4-5 hour burn time).

To reuse the glass jars, simply flick out the metal wick sustainer when the tealight has finished burning and pop in a new tealight.  To clean the jars use hot, soapy water.

Here’s how they look when they are lighting up the Greenhouse by Joost…

Jam Jar tealights lighting up the Greenhouse by Joost at Melbourne Food and Wine Fair

Everyone looks better looking by beeswax candle light?

Queen B Jam Jar tealights lighting up the Greenhouse by Joost at Melbourne Food and Wine – notice that apart from the legally required safety lighting, the entire dining area was lit purely by beeswax tealight candles.  Go bees.  Joost, the diners & the planet thanks you.

 

And here are trays of these beautiful little lights freshly poured from an enamel teapot at Queen B.

Trays of Jam Jar tealight candle refills

Jam Jar tealight candles in reusable glass jam jars

If you’re looking for a eco gift that is Australian made, supports our regional communities, will light up people’s lives, smells good, looks great and isn’t going to end up as landfill, look no further.

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Queen B beeswax candles are made with 100% pure Australian beeswax a pure cotton wick and copious amounts of hand made love. We stock beautiful and stylish candle holders, personalised candles, votive candles, tealight candles and pillar candles that nourish the human spirit and our environment.

 

 

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On the 12th week of Christmas my true love sent to me

a love letter asking for a discount off Queen B…

And who are we to argue?  If a discount means more people buying Queen B candles well that’s a great thing for our beekeepers and the regional communities they live in, not to mention creating more of a buzz at our hive.  Worker Bees – both the insect and human varieties – love to be kept busy.  So here’s what we’re going to do:

Each week in the lead up to Christmas we’ll put one of our best sellers at 20% off for 72 hours only.  The line up is as follows:

05/10 – 07/10     20% off the entire Marrakech range of rolled pillars - yes, that’s this week’s special and because I’m a day late in doing this post, it runs for 2 days from today, all other weeks the special will be from Thursday – Saturday

11/10 – 13/10      20% off Queen B’s iconic Eco Bulb

25/10 – 27/10     20% off our Angels

01/11 – 03/11     20% off Queen B Bee Lights & Bee Light holders

08/11 – 10/11     20% off Fat Santa

15/11 – 17/11      20% off Nutcrackers

22/11 – 24/11     20% off Large Christmas Trees

29/11 – 01/12     20% off Small Christmas Trees

06/12 – 08/12    20% off Mary Joseph & Baby Jesus

13/12 – 15/12     20% off the entire Casablanca range of rolled pillars

20/12 – 22/12    20% off Burning Love (we’ll send them Express Post)

If you’re worried you’ll forget, Like us on Facebook because we’ll post a reminder there of what’s on sale each week.

Hip, hip horray

A honey aroma-ed, golden candle-lit Christmas AND a partridge in a pear tree.  Amazing.

Marrakech range of rolled Queen B pillar dinner candles

 

 

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Life too beige?

Personally I am a fan of beige… and cream… and gray (shades of, even)… and black… and faun… but just occasionally it’s great to lash out and let a little colour in.  Call me crazy baby.  That’s just the kind of gal that I am.  What fun then to combine my love of candles AND splashes of colour with these gorgeous recycled glass candlesticks (all the while showing a little support for the Spanish economy).  Take it from someone who has welcomed a little bright orange into her life, it’s enough to make you smile! [and for those of you wedded to the elegance of black, I've got them too and they really work rather well with the other colours too].

Spanish made recycled glass candlesticks

 

Bright orange recycled glass candlesticks

 

Chartreuse recycled glass candle sticks

 

Hot pink recycled glass candlesticks

 

Bright green recycled glass candle sticks

 

Black recycled glass candlesticks

 

What’s your favourite colour?

 

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Queen B beeswax candles are made with 100% pure Australian beeswax a pure cotton wick and copious amounts of hand made love. We stock beautiful and stylish candle holders, personalised candles, votive candles, tealight candles and pillar candles that nourish the human spirit and our environment.

 

 

 

 

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An interesting tidbit on the benefit of blogging

There are some aspects of social media that I get, and some that I don’t.  Twitter, for example, I don’t get.  I have nothing useful to say in 160 characters.  I don’t find much of what anyone else says in 160 characters that useful either.  It’s a little too like shouting.  Yet I have a friend who has built a multimillion dollar business from the ground up who tells me that a large part of that success is because of Twitter.  One day I hope to get it.

Blogging, where I can be verbose and give waaaaaayyyyyyy too much information I get.  I get feedback (which I love).  It’s engaging.  I think it lifts the veil a little on Queen B (not that there’s too much mystery there).  It’s like sharing something with a friend… it makes you feel closer.  I am not interested in “running a business”, I was to make a difference to people’s lives.  I am not overly interested in flogging candles.  I want to light up your dark times (and the romantic ones and the light ones in between).

Anyway, on Wednesday I was chatting to Working Bee and telling her about the online world and how it has changed the nature of business.  We’d been tidying shelves and found these beautiful, little tealight cylinder hurricanes that I had bought months ago and I had never put online.  So, we photographed them and we put them up on the website.  We sold six within an hour and another 12 within 24 hours of the product going live.  Mind blowing.  And that was before we even blogged about them.  Or put them in a newsletter.  Or tweeted about it!  And before the whole idea even went viral.  Who would have thunk it?

Here they are

Cylinder hurricane tealight holders x 6 (tealights not included)

 

I think what people like best is that it’s only $34.95 for the 6 holders.  And it’s spring – so we get to play outdoors again.  Oh, and it’s Australian Year of the Farmer and buying Queen B candles supports our farmers… but more on that later.

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Queen B beeswax candles are made with 100% pure Australian beeswax a pure cotton wick and copious amounts of hand made love. We stock beautiful and stylish candle holders, personalised candles, votive candles and pillar candles that nourish the human spirit and our environment.

 

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More porcelain domes… and new porcelain cups

OK, I know, it’s been a while since I last wrote but it has been a crazy 6 weeks or so.  That means I’ve got LOTS to update you on so this will be an active little blog over the next week.

First up, because we’ve just unpacked them all and we’re loading things on the website as we speak, we’ve got a whole load of new porcelain tealight candleholder domes in and we’ve also started stocking the porcelain cups in a variety of beautiful designs.  Retailing at $11.95 (for the cup) and $24.95 (for the dome) these are always one of our best-selling gifts.

Here’s a few of the new cup designs:

Porcelain cup tealight candle holder – Dandelion

 

Porcelain cup tealight candleholder – Roses

 

Porcelain candle holder tealight cup – Dragonfly

 

Porcelain candle holder tealight cup – Chinese Blossom

 

Porcelain candleholder tealight cup – Cherubs

 

Porcelain candleholder tealight cup – Hanging Blossoms

 

Black porcelain tealight candle holder cup – Filigree Dragonfly

 

 

And as if they aren’t tempting enough, we have lots of new designs in the domes as well.  Clever people.

 

Porcelain dome tealight holder – Filigree Butterfly

 

Porcelain dome tealight candleholder – Frangipani

 

Porcelain dome tealight candleholder – Sunflower

 

Porcelain dome tealight candleholder – Filigree Heart

 

Black porcelain dome tealight candleholder – Filigree Dragonfly

 

Black porcelain dome tealight candle holder – Filigree Butterfly

 

Black porcelain dome tealight candleholder – Tulip

 

Porcelain dome tealight candleholder – Bluebells & Butterflies

 

Phew.

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Queen B beeswax candles are made with 100% pure Australian beeswax a pure cotton wick and copious amounts of hand made love. We stock beautiful and stylish candle holders, personalised candles, votive candles and pillar candles that nourish the human spirit and our environment.

 

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New Lampe Light

You know I’m an old fashioned kind of gal… and whilst that doesn’t extend to burning kerosene in a lamp, I’ve always been a little partial to that look.

I’ve also been looking for years for a holder that would provide wind protection for our tapers (which are one of my favourite candles to burn).  Perfect for outdoor light, bedside light, electricity outages or romantic evenings these Lampe Lights are something special. [Apologies for the pink tinge to the photograph - i can't work out how to fix it!]

Lampe Light

With the 20cm tapers a little too tall, we’ve also created brand new 12cm taper candles which come in a bundle of 10.

12cm beeswax taper candles

And they’re a little bit gorgeous for all sorts of things… I did a little testing this week in a Wee Willie Winkie.

Wee willie winkie with 12cm taper

And just to finish things off with more pink tinged photographic work, here’s the taper a little burned down in the Lampe Light holder.  The (very neat and gorgeous) drippage at the base is because I was carrying it around to performance test it.  Neat drippage gets a big tick from me.  Prefer not to carry it around though and prefer no drips!

Just to finish off with a pink tinge

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Cam shaft candlesticks

Sometimes it helps to have no idea about cars or their mechanics…

Driving across the Nullarbor, we happened upon a town (it actually had a name) that consisted of a church on one side of the road and an abandoned house on the other.  Mitch looked for enlightenment, I looked for treasure.

Previous Home of Cam Shaft Candlesticks

I emerged victorious a little while later with my new “candlesticks” in hand.  I know enlightenment can be achieved simply by lighting a few beeswax candles.  Anyway, beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder as Mitch thought they looked like rusted old cam shafts.  I have an eye for potential, potential, potential.  Renovators dream.  A blank canvas.  All things that get me excited!

About 2000km’s later and lots of elbow grease, I got to work on my new candlesticks over the weekend, and voila… if that’s not a thing of beauty, then I’m a pork chop.  Now I just need to drill a hole in the top for a taper candle, sand off the bottom and fire them up.  I’m told these are from a 6 cylinder Holden.  Being a Holden ute girl, that was music to my ears.  Never before have I been so fascinated by pistons and cylinders.  Next week I’m going hunting for some 4 cylinder cam shafts.  Happy days.  I bet my parents are happy they paid for that private school education now!

Cam shaft candlesticks (before & after)

Reckon I should get a range of these on the market?  At about 80cm tall, the drama queen in you will LOVE them!

Cate x

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Saving the best for Christmas until last…

I’ve been keeping these up my sleeve because they are special…

Really, really special…

Made in Australia (actually on Sydney’s Northern Beaches), they are solid brass or nickel coated brass.  Each holder is individually made and hand finished to remove the sharp edges.  They are designed to hold our Bee Lights.

Each tree comes in its own gorgeous, made in Australia, fabulous quality, kraft board packaging.  Fabulous recycled as a paperclip holder, button holder or anything else small.

We have VERY limited quantities because they were extremely time consuming to make.  They are RRP $39.95 and we have 20% off for the next 24 hours only.

Christmas Tree Bee Light holders

Brass Christmas Tree Bee Light holder

Nickel plated Christmas Tree Bee Light holder

 

You know how sometimes if you stay in the moving watching all the credit’s, they put a good bit right at the end?… well, here’s the good bit!…

Here’s a little look at the product development cycle of our little Christmas Tree candle holder.  I must say I was a little worried when the first prototype came back!  I think we nailed it in the end though.

Christmas tree prototype 1... mmmm, no!

Christmas Prototype 2... cut a little deep

Christmas Tree Prototype 3... getting there, but too sharp

Christmas Tree Prototype 4... perfection!

Christmas Tree Candle holder... product development

If that’s not a fine candle holder, I don’t know what is!

Cate xx

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Random act of kindness

Goodness gracious me… my day that started with a parking ticket at 6.30am for having my ute in a Truck Zone while I got coffee just took a lovely turn for the better.

A courier just walked in with a delivery from Peter’s of Kensington.  “No,” I said “not for me.  I haven’t ordered anything.”  Examination of the delivery docket showed clearly addressed to Cate Burton, Queen B…

Much tape ripping and general exclamation later, out come a beautiful Orrefors box… and inside?

Orrefors raspberry tealight holder

Orrefors Raspberry Tealight holder

How beautiful is that?… but still nothing to show who it was from.

So I called PofK.  A little digging later and they told me that the email address of the person who ordered was Cecily…

Now get this…

Cecily first ordered from Queen B online in September.  When she got the order she emailed to say thanks so much and gave me some lovely feedback on how her hayfever had improved since she’d been burning the candles.  Big tick for sending feedback.  Then last week Cecily decided to pop into the hive.  She wanted tealights for her new Orrefors raspberry votive holder.  I must have had a coffee that day because I was chatty and engaging and Cecily clearly walked out a happy customer.

Four days later… bingo.  My very own raspberry votive holder.  But I think what I love the most is that I am lucky enough to have people like Cecily in my life.  So, a big shout out to the Cecily’s in each of our lives.

If you have been the beneficiary of a random act of kindness, please share it on the blog.  If it gets lots of posts and votes and feedback, I’ll email you for the details of the giver and send them a little bee-created light.

And to the parking officer who gave me a ticket this morning, perhaps you would like to become a contributing member of society?  Perhaps you should think about spreading joy rather than misery?  I think that a ute should qualify as a truck (in fact I actually did).  And since when has 6am been a reasonable hour for a parking restriction to apply?  We didn’t need you for the first several millennia and we don’t need you now.  No, you aren’t doing society a favour.  No there would not be anarchy if you weren’t spreading your misery around all day.  We would cope just fine.

Cecily has a little extra Queen B light winging its way over to her today.  Yay.

Spread the love people… I was telling my neighbour about my random act of kindness day and she just brought me a cup of organic rosehip tea with a teaspoon of stringy bark honey.  What parking officer?  I’m on a honey high.

Cate xx

And now for the Queen B tealight lighting up said Orrefors Raspberry tealight holder

You can see all the candles we currently have available in our Christmas range on our website.

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Queen B beeswax candles are made with 100% pure Australian beeswax a pure cotton wick and copious amounts of hand made love. We stock beautiful and stylish candle holders, personalised candles, votive candles, tealight candles and pillar candles that nourish the human spirit and our environment.

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frenchglassware.com.au – a new world record for business concept to live website?

If you’ve been following Queen B for a while, you’d know that for several years now I have stocked several items in the Napoleonic Bee range of glassware from La Rochere.  I originally bought it not just because of the Napoleonic Bee design which I love, but also because of its rich heritage.

La Rochere dinnerware, tableware and glassware is made in the Haute Saone region in France where it has been made since 1475.  [and I thought 10 years of Queen B was exhausting!]  How fabulous is that?  We would be hard pressed to find many other global brands of the size of La Rochere that continue to manufacture in a developed country.

So, I love what the company stand for, I love their glassware (which is also practical in that it is dishwasher safe) and to top it all off, I love the boys who bring it in to Australia.  It is simply impossible to feel even one iota of glumness in their presence!

A few weeks ago a customer called me who had been on our Queen B website looking at the La Rochere glassware and she wanted 4 dozen of a particular glass.  So I gave her a discount and trundled up the road to get the glasses off the boys.  While I was there I asked them why they weren’t selling online themselves.  Turns out a mouse is an animal to them not a useful tool to navigate around a computer!  They suggested I do it for them instead.

et voila!  frenchglassware.com.au was born and in a superhuman feat, my clever web guy has managed to build the backend of the website in just 3 weeks and in that time I’ve run a design competition on Design Crowd for our new logo and spent over 100 hours sourcing and sizing photography and getting all my facts and figures correct.

Tonight we go live.  Yay.

If you are looking for beautiful French glassware, tableware and dinnerware – tumblers, wine glasses, water glasses, candleholders, plates, bowls and carafes & jugs – for living each day as if it were your last.  We have the largest selection of La Rochere designs of any retailer in Australia and we’re planning to move it in volume and pass on the savings.  I have yet to understand the impact of Australia Post shipping charges on the business model, but for now we’re doing everything at 10% off RRP.

La Rochere glassware is made at very high temperatures and is famous for its uniquely clear glass and hardiness.

I am VERY mindful that you’ve signed up to hear about Queen B, not French Glassware, so if you want to keep up with the French Glassware news, you can sign up for the newsletter on the home page.

If you come across any issues with the website, please let me know (much of it has been done through heavy eyelids after 16 hours at Queen B ).

Happy shopping

Cate xx

Of course, you can also see all the Queen B candles we currently have available in our Christmas range on the Queen B website.

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Queen B beeswax candles are made with 100% pure Australian beeswax a pure cotton wick and copious amounts of hand made love. We stock beautiful and stylish candle holders, personalised candles, votive candles, tealight candles and pillar candles that nourish the human spirit and our environment.

 

 

 

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