by Julia Wooten

Brand: Bath and Body Works

Type: 4 oz and 14.5 oz. candles

Fragrances:
Frosted Cranberry
Twilight Woods
Creamy Nutmeg
Winter
Fresh Balsam

Cost: $9.50 - $19.50

Scent Strength: Varied

Introduction to my Bath & Body Works "winter wonderland" review:

Bath and Body Works is well known for their fragrant body products. We’ve all been to the mall and ducked into Bath and Body Works for a quick little scent indulgence. Over the past few years I’ve noticed a change at Bath and Body Works… a decided shift from strictly bath and body products to including fragrance oils, warmers and scented candles. I am thrilled with this move towards home scenting. Personal fragrance and home fragrance go hand in hand, so it just seems natural to showcase scented candles alongside bath and body treats.

Slatkin & Co is the driving force behind many of the new scented candle fragrances on the shelves at Bath and Body Works. Each season brings us new scents to explore as well as some returning favorites.

Bath and Body Works carries a complete line of Statkin & Co. candles and fragrance oils both in their stores and online. Their website is super easy to navigate and sales are a regular occurrence so I’m always checking in to see what new scents are available and what the current sales are.

This Winter I chose to review some seasonal scents to get me though the long days and cold nights. Even though I enjoy candles all year round, Winter in particular is just made for cozying up with warm fragrances and candlelight.

What did my Slatkin Candles from Bath & Body Works look like?

These single wicked little four ounce candle jars were compact, and easy to cart around the house. I did just that too… I moved each one of these jars around from area to area testing out their strength in different rooms. When I initially gathered up the candles for this review, the Frosted Cranberry four ounce jar was not in stock…evidently a popular scent…and the harder it was to find it, the more I longed to try it. I was able to get Frosted Cranberry in a fragrance oil so I was content to review it as my first experience with Bath and Body Works fragrance oils. Well, as luck would have it, I received a gift over the holidays and when I looked inside the bag, there sat a big, heavy 14.5 ounce, three wicked Slatkin & Co. jar of Frosted Cranberry. I was floored! I hadn’t mentioned this or any other candle to my friend, so this gift was the most surprising of the season.

Each glass jar had a shiny silver airtight lid with all of the pertinent detailed information on a bottom label. The jars each had an attractive scent label decal on the side as well. The seasonal Winter scent had a smart looking silver etched-looking pattern around the entire jar. It was my favorite to look at.

The wax in all of my candles was a creamy white, except for Frosted Cranberry which was a berry red color. The four ounce jars were single wicked and the large 14.5 ounce jar had three wicks.

How did my Slatkin candles from Bath & Body Works smell?

Frosted Cranberry

Frosted Cranberry is described as:

“the perfect blend of white cranberry, juicy peach, wild strawberry, sparkling raspberry, and true Christmas joy.”

Why save the best for last? I fell head over heels for the Frosted Cranberry candle. The scent was buoyant, joyful, and just bursting with sparkling berries. It was sweet, but tart too, and was the strongest of all the scents I tried. This was a much larger jar candle too so I’ve no doubt that the candle size and triple wicks had much to do with the scent throw.

The description lists juicy peach and wild strawberry in it. I didn’t pick out these notes in particular. I mostly smelled a tart cranberry and raspberry. The scent was an absolute pleasure. Even my husband who’s had it up to here some of my scent choices liked this bright, fun berry scent.

I tried Frosted Cranberry in a fragrance oil also. This was my first experience with fragrance oil and perhaps I used too many drops at once, but I found the oil to have a synthetic smell to it that I didn’t really care for. I liked the scent from the candle much more…I guess I’m a candle girl at heart.

Twilight Woods

Here is the description from Bath and Body Works: “a complex blend of apricot nectar, mimosa petals and Tuscan cypress.”

Twilight Woods, a part of Bath and Body Works Signature Collection, was a soft, sexy fragrance that was beautiful in a home scent, but would have been even better as a body fragrance.

This fragrance had a alluring, powdery, lightness that was really intriguing. Twilight Woods was sweet, like a berry mixed with soft floral and grounded with the deeper scent of woods…but not masculine in the least. I expected Twilight Woods to be more heavy and woodsy but what I found was a musky, almost tropical scent. I thought there was vanilla in it as well, reminiscent of Bath and Body Works other popular fragrance, Warm Vanilla Sugar. In fact, the longer I smelled Twilight Woods, the more it reminded me of Warm Vanilla Sugar, but with a tropical edge.

I just kept thinking that as good as this smelled, I would prefer to have been wearing the fragrance instead of burning it. I suppose I could certainly wear Twilight Woods as well as scent my home with it, but never at the same time. I’m reminded of a scene from the movie Garden State where the character’s jacket matches the exact pattern of the wallpaper behind him, and I just can’t get past that image. I’d prefer not to blend in quite that much.

Creamy Nutmeg

This scent sounded good to me from the beginning:

“An inviting and warm blend of fresh ground nutmeg, vanilla and pralines atop a base of dark, rich rum.”

Here I was thinking that Bath and Body works didn’t have many foody type scents. Well, I stand corrected. Creamy Nutmeg is all about warm comforting goodness. It was nutty and sweet, and…oh, this scent was so much more than what I had anticipated.

This was not just a simple, one note Nutmeg. I’m not saying it was all that complex, but it had more going on than just one spice. It smelled like a decadent desert…sweet, but not over-the-top either. I liked the rum and the pralines…I wanted to just eat this scent. It smelled like a sweet creamy rum custard with crushed pralines.

This 4 oz candle scented my smaller rooms better than the larger ones, but I ended up keeping it next to me wherever I was. There was no way it could fill my largest room, but as long as I kept it close, I could really enjoy the scent.

Winter

It’s getting colder outside and I just had to try this scent:

“Inspired by freshly fallen snow, perfect holiday getaways and the ultimate winter wonderland, Winter is a festive blend of shimmering pine, crisp bay leaf, red cinnamon and warm winter woods.”

This scent boasted the ultimate winter wonderland. That was a tall order considering my current surroundings are nothing less than tropical. Here in Florida, winter wonderland involves beach sand and palm trees…. but each Winter I yearn for my northern roots and secretly hold out hope for a miracle snow storm to blow through.

I lit the Winter candle as soon as we had the slightest cool front, determined to live the snow covered dream, and it worked to some degree. It at least set a festive wintery mood that put me in mind of a crackling wood fireplace.

I picked up some interesting notes in the Winter scent. It had a fruity, citrusy top note, and also more than a hint of hearth fire. Go figure. None of this is listed in the scent description, but that’s what I smelled. The pine and warm woods were ever present in the scent, but I couldn’t pick out the red cinnamon specifically.

This scent seemed pretty strong when compared to the other scents I had been sampling in the same 4oz sized jars. For whatever reason, this scent seemed to easily carry throughout the room. I started it in the bathroom but it soon outgrew the space so I moved it to my kitchen where it cheerily pumped scent out like gangbusters.

Fresh Balsam

Here is the description for Fresh Balsam:

“Crisp, clean balsam fir blends delightfully with fresh eucalyptus and sweet pine layered with notes of bright apple, cedarwood and musk.”

Where Winter was a festive pine with all of the razzamatazz… Fresh Balsam was more of a true pine. All solemn and breathtaking.

I was surprised to see all of these notes in this scent. All I smelled was a fresh pine branch… as if I had brought a tree branch in from outside and splintered it into a potpourri. I did catch some of the eucalyptus which blended seamlessly with the pine.

I would have liked this scent to be stronger… no, that’s an understatement, man I wished this scent was stronger. Fresh Balsam smelled incredible and I wanted my whole house to smell just like that, but the small jar just couldn’t keep up in the main room. It worked hard to scent a standard sized bedroom, but perhaps it would be stronger in a larger sized candle or even in the fragrance oil. Knowing how much fragrance I got out of my 14.5 ounce jar of Frosted Cranberry, I’m convinced that a larger jar would be just the thing for this scent.

How did my candles burn?

Each one of these candles burned well. The three wick jar burned the best. I’m starting to think that where wicking is concerned, the more the merrier… not always, but often enough. Each jar produced a complete, edge to edge melt pool and the wicks burned cleanly with minimal attention. That’s pretty much all anyone could ask for in a candle and all of the candles I tried this go-round performed beautifully.

Closing to my review…

These candles from Bath and Body Works have started me off on the right path. Just knowing there are dozens more scents available at our local mall or online is more tempting than ever before. I was impressed with the scent quality of the candles I tried. Frosted Cranberry in the larger sized jar had the biggest throw, so in the future I plan to go big or stay home. While the four ounce jars were an economical way to sample new scents, once I choose my favorites, I’m going for the larger sizes.

The problem will be choosing my favorites. I enjoyed each of the scents in this review and would happily repurchase any one of them. With Bath and Body Works already tempting me with bath treats, how will I ever resist the draw of scented candles on their shelves too? I’m in trouble… good trouble that is. I’ll be sure to watch for a sale at Bath and Body Works and pick up a few more candles along with my bath and body products.

Happy candle shopping!

~ Julia

Visit Bath & Body Works