We love finding date ideas and gift ideas all in one; and KANDL Artistique in Yorkville certainly checks off both of those boxes. You may know KANDL Artistique as a boutique store for luxury candles (including brands like Drake’s Better World Fragrance House and DIPTYQUE), but go beyond the retail section and there’s so much more!
Candle shopping in a store as pretty as this, surrounded by amazing local restaurants does sound like a date night in itself, but what if you add a workshop element to that? KANDL Artistique offers private and group candle-making workshops in their gorgeous lab.
Now, you can create your very own one-of-a-kind custom scented candle to take home, as a sweet memento after a great date!
How it works
When you walk into KANDL Artistique, and finally make your way past the retail area, you’ll find a gorgeous café and wine bar counter before you get to the candle-making lab. You can order an assortment of beverages including coffee, tea, sparkling kombucha, wine, and more to sip on during your workshop!
We recommend getting something with your date to enhance your upcoming date activity – wine and London Fogs are always good candle-making fuel we hear.
When you sit down and get your really cute KANDL aprons on, you’re ready to start the process! You and your date, guided by an expert team member from KANDL, will choose, combine, and create your custom fragrances. There’s over 125 potential outcomes meaning you likely won’t have the same candle as the person beside you!
Because scent is such a personal and subjective thing, they want to make sure everyone will find a scent they like to take home, whether you’re looking for more woodsy scents, fruity, fresh, or tropical.
Step 1: Choose your scents
You’ll smell through three layers of scents for your custom candle; the base notes, middle notes, and top notes. With five scents in each of those categories, your candle will reveal new and delicious scents as it burns.
They even give you a fun card to keep notes of your favourites and coffee beans to sniff in between scents to clear your nose (like a palate cleanser) – you’re going to need it, it’s an especially difficult process if you have a hard time making decisions, we liked it all!
Step 2: Get your candle vessel ready
Part of what makes KANDL Artistique’s candles so gorgeous are the vessels, you get to choose the colour that your candle will live in. Your next step is preparing the vessel and wicks while the scents are being mixed by the KANDL team.
You have to do this pretty quickly, because they put hot glue on the end of the metal base of the wick and you stick it at the bottom of the vessel (as in the middle as you can)! If you’ve ever wondered how wicks get in the candle, you’ll get the inside scoop.
Step 3: Mixing and pouring the wax
When the scents and wax comes, you have to continue moving quickly since it dries fast – your expert guide will show you the ropes on how to mix your scents into the wax and pour your candle for the perfect result.
Step 4: Label and take home!
Once your candle is poured, you wait about 10-15 minutes so the wax can cool down in the vessel. In the meantime, you can hang out with your date listening to chill music and sipping on a drink, or stroll around the retail space and pick up even more candles (and diffusers) for your home, or as gifts!
You can customize the gorgeous gold label and name your candle whatever you want. What do you think we named ours?
Once the label is stuck on, the KANDL team wraps it up for you in a gorgeous box and bag and sends you on your way with a new take home gift from your date night.
The whole workshop takes about 90 minutes and is $95.00 CAD per person, which includes the candle take-home.
