Last week I wrote an article called Grand Valley Bucket List. But here’s the thing, even though Grand Junction is a tiny town to some, there’s a lot you can still see and do here. It was pretty impossible to cover all of it in one article and there were a lot of events and places the article didn’t do justice.  I’ve lived here my whole life and there’s always something going on or changing or happening. It takes a column to cover it.

This week, I made a candle at The Candle Kitchen at 105 N 5th St off of Main St.  The Candle Kitchen is a place where you can custom design your own candle creation. There’s a small voice in me that lives for do-it-yourself projects, Pinterest, Etsy and all things craft; she was screaming when she heard about this place.

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The Candle Kitchen opened Apr. 7 last year, and while it took me a while to give it a try, I’ve only heard good things. I think the arts and craft industry is the biggest area of development in Grand Junction next to the entertainment industry.

Businesses like Angelo’s Pottery, The Palette, and Fat Cat Pottery have all done increasingly well here in GJ. You don’t just pay for the experience of painting and crafting, you also pay for the customized piece of art you can take home with you. I love my collection of hand-painted coffee mugs I’ve done over the years but it’s nice to see craft stores expanding into more than just paintings and dishes and glass work. I wanted a candle I can light over and over again and always remember the time I spent picking out the scents to make it.

When you walk into The Candle Kitchen, the first thing that hits you is the smell. Before you even enter the store, you can smell all the candles and essential oils, and it’s such a warm and calming smell. The inside of the store is equally pleasant; the modest nature chic decor only adds to the DIY crafty vibe.

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As you walk in, the first thing you need to do is grab a recipe clipboard. There you’ll write down your name and you can begin sniffing the smaller candles to find scents you enjoy. “We have 140 scents, and we generally have 115 out at a time. Our fall scents will actually go out after Memorial Day. We have pumpkin spice, autumn leaves, we have a lot of your spices like cinnamon spice, clove, scents like that,” Alexis Prall said. When you find one you like, you can write down the name of it so you can remember it when making your perfect candle creation.

Prall, sophomore at Colorado Mesa University, has been working at The Candle Kitchen since their opening. Being a student herself, she understand the difficulty of working with restrictions of open flames in the dorm room. “If you can make a candle, great. Otherwise we have wax tarts, reed diffusers and room sprays as well that don’t require any flames.” After you pick out your scents, you can pick out what you want to create.

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For me, since I live in an apartment off campus, I chose to make candles, but they have tons of options for everyone. All of the candles are advertised to have between a 60 hour and a 120 hour burn time. For me, I selected a small square container that has a 60 hour burn time and a larger prism shaped container that has a 90 hour burn time.

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I settled in to make some candles. My first creation was a jasmine patchouli scented candle for my smaller container. I chose these smells because they are a little darker, unlike a lot of the summer scents which are nice and light, I think fall has more of the darker and stronger scents, which is what I tend to prefer more. While it was a little difficult to really try and smell what the candle was going to be like, I knew I liked both of them, I just sort of mixed them together and hope they complimented each other well.

My second candle was a sunflower clothesline scent. Growing up, the window to my room overlooked a garden of sunflowers. As soon as I smelled the sunflower sample candle I felt like I was a little kid again, it took me right back to all of those memories. I knew I needed to make it my bigger candle.

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To mix the candles, Prall had us sit at the bar and let us mix our own oils together in a jigger. If you don’t know what a jigger is, it’s something used by bartenders to measure liquor. For me, I tried to add an even mix of the jasmine and patchouli, but added about 75/25 mix of sunflower and clothesline.

She informed me that it’s good to mix slowly and you can intermittently stop filling up the jigger to smell your creation. After you’re done mixing, she prepares your container, filling it up with the 100% soy mix that you end up dumping your oils into. She gives you a spoon to mix the liquids together for a minute or two, and then you’re done!

The whole process takes only about 45 minutes to complete.

My two candles together cost just shy of $45 dollars. Not bad given the fact that together the candles I made can burn up to 150 hours. It’s a little steep for something to do every week, but it’s priced as something I could go do every now and again.

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They currently do not offer any deals for students or any discounts or events that promote their candle creations. “It’ll take about an hour to an hour and a half for your candle to really set up. So you can go walk Main Street or do something else in the meantime.” Because they close at 7 p.m. on weekdays, I had to wait until the next day to pick up my candles, but I still had a lot of fun making them.

I could easily see a bunch of parties being hosted there, it being a place I bring my mom on mother’s day. I could also see myself making some candles (or mandles) for my dad and brother, because there’s so many masculine scents that they offer. There’s even one called “dad’s den” that smells pretty great. Overall, it’s worth trying out.