A Cheerful Giver Candles – Summer Scented Candles

by Julia Wooten

Brand: A Cheerful Giver

Type: 6oz Baby Jars,
12-20oz Candles by the Sea (Salt & Light collection)

Fragrance: Sweet Tea Chardonnay
Swept Away
and Pina Colada

Cost: $9 – $19.90

Scent Strength:  Medium – Strong

Introduction to my A Cheerful Giver Review:

I’ve recently had the pleasure of shopping at A Cheerful Giver. When you see their website, you’ll know what I mean by a “pleasure”. For us candle buffs, even looking at pictures of beautiful candles is a fun way to pass the time, and A Cheerful Giver has got pages and pages of gorgeous looking wax to tempt us.When I viewed all of the different styles from pillars to jars, it was hard not to want one of everything. There are cute beehive shaped jars, incredible looking Fuze pillars, grubby or smooth pillars, and of course their signature Keepers of the Light jar collection. That collection alone was enough to make my jaw drop. How is an easily tempted candle junkie (like me) to decide on just a few scents when there are so many mouth watering bakery scents, dreamy fresh florals, and juicy fruity scents to choose from?These candles are like potato chips… you can never get just one. Check out this website if you dare. I’ll bet you don’t leave empty handed.I will be reviewing several candles from A Cheerful Giver periodically, and I can’t wait to share them with you, so be on the lookout for more of these interesting scent selections in the upcoming months.

For now, I chose a few of A Cheerful Giver’s Summertime and drink inspired scents to quench my thirst for great smelling candles.

What do my candles from A Cheerful Giver look like?

My candles are absolutely charming. The 6 oz baby jars are larger than most small sized jars. They look just like the larger sized jars but in miniature. Each one has a rustic metal lid and a small scent name label down low on the side of the jar…very unobtrusive, which is good because I couldn’t peel the label off easily. The Sweet Tea scent is brown colored just like a real glass of tea would be. The Chardonnay candle is a pale champagne color.The Candles by the Sea jars are in a tapered style, smaller on the bottom, and wider on top, like a vase. There is probably a technical name for this style jar, but I’ll just call it a flower vase jar.These jars are beachy looking with pale mauve colored ceramic lids and pure white wax. Each jar was all dressed up too with a cute charm…one had a sweet ceramic ladybug charm attached and the other was adorned with a pale pink ceramic starfish.The scent labels on the Candles by the Sea collection are on the bottom of the jars, so nothing detracted from the clean, charming look of these jars.

How did my candles from A Cheerful Giver smell?

Sweet Tea

We don’t really refer to sweet tea as Southern Sweet Tea down here… most of the time we don’t even distinguish it as sweet tea. It’s such a common drink here in Florida… if you order tea in a restaurant, it’ll most likely come to you iced and sweet. Now, if you want your tea unsweetened, or heaven forbid hot instead of iced, you’d better speak up.A Cheerful Giver provided such an enticing description for this scent:

“A zest of sparkling citrus accords is complimented with herbaceous tea leaves and warming accords of drizzled honey and vanilla. This fragrance is the perfect glass of icy southern sweet tea on a hot day!”

I was thirsty just reading about this scent. I couldn’t wait to get my nose up to this opened jar, and… oh… it was so worth the wait. The scent is like a big ol’ glass of sweet tea, just like it says.

I smelled mostly tea and some honey sweetness, which is actually a bit more sophisticated than the sugar sweetened tea I’m used to. Oddly, my nose didn’t pick up a huge punch of citrus. It was there, but very subtle. By the description, I was expecting it to be much more pronounced.

As it was, I was quite pleased with this Sweet Tea scent. I tried this scent in the six ounce baby sized jar. It was strongly scented for the jar size. I’ve no doubt that a larger jar would have thrown even better, but this small jar did just fine in my entryway – the same sized space as an average powder room. It got lost in my larger main area, but I was happy with it’s performance overall.

Chardonnay

Okay, check out this description for Chardonnay:

“A sweet Chardonnay wine fragrance with apple, banana, lemon and bergamot notes. This fragrance also has a fruity melon accord and a spice undertone which amplify the grape character of the wine.”

What do you think? Pretty complex for a wine scent, right? I knew I’d have my work cut out for me trying to distinguish all of these different scent notes.I started this jar off in the powder room simply because of the baby jar size that I had. The description for this scent was so intriguing I wanted to get as much of the fragrance characteristics as I could. Knowing that the small sized jar worked best in a small room, I kept this one in the loo for it’s entire burn. I could smell it clearly each time I entered the room, so I was pleased with the throw from this jar.

This scent is hard to describe. If I didn’t know it was called Chardonnay, I wouldn’t automatically think the fragrance is a wine fragrance. It did smell good and was pretty strong for the mini jar size. I could smell the bergamot, which I liked, along with the melon and a very subtle spice. I didn’t smell the apple or banana in particular, but I don’t doubt they were in there somewhere adding to the overall effect.

The scent was pleasant enough, and I did enjoy it, but this uber complicated smelling Chardonnay is probably not one I would rush to reorder.

Candles By the Sea collection

Swept Away

Here is the scent description for Swept Away:

“A delightful blend of sensual jasmine, fresh lotus blossoms. and green agave leaf are all wrapped up in a layer of sheer musk”.

What a beautiful blend of fragrances. It was fresh as well as lightly floral… an absolute treat from start to finish.If you’ve never smelled a green agave note in a candle, you’ve got to give it a try. It really adds dimension to whatever scent it is paired up with. In this case it’s a beautiful addition that gives this scent a deeper, almost mysterious note. Every time I caught a whiff of this candle I would stand there and try to place that something extra that was in there. This scent kept me guessing at the notes and yet I wanted to be around it all day long. This is a wonderful scent… not like any other jasmine scent I’ve ever tried. It is surprisingly complex and almost intoxicating.The scent strength was a bonus too. I tried the large sized jar and it easily carried my powder room and right on down the hall. I brought it out to my desk area, so I could enjoy it even more and the strength was just fine in the much larger space. This 20 ounce jar candle was not just any room filler, it was a super large room filler.

Pina Colada

What’s not to like? It’s Summer… It’s Pina Colada time… Bring it on and keep them coming! “A slice of fresh coconut shaved on top of a icy blended buttery, rum infused tropical drink. Take this tropical treat home to remember a taste of the islands! “

I whipped up some Pina Coladas in the blender recently. I’d like to say I did it all for the sake of researching the authenticity of this scent, but truth be told, I just had a hankering. The air temperature has been in the 90’s for weeks, even the water temperature in the Gulf is 90 degrees. There is precious little relief from the heat, so I threw on my old Jimmy Buffet CD and chilled with a couple of homemade pina coladas. I even found a drink umbrella to stick in my glass. Granted, I found the umbrella at the bottom of the junk drawer… not exactly sterile… but I figure the rum took care of any germs. A kitchen bartender is nothing if not resourceful.So back to this candle scent…I don’t even want to admit this, but the Pina Colada candle smelled better… better than the drinks I made. There it is… I’ve said it. I could smell the creamy coconut, the tropical sweet pineapple, with a touch of vanilla maybe. There is something in this scent that makes it lusciously sweet… sweeter than the real thing. It’s another terrific scent from A Cheerful Giver. I look forward to getting this one again.I burned the 12 ounce vase styled jar of Pina Colada and it filled my medium sized bedroom with ease. This scent made me not only appreciate the hot Summer afternoons, but made me want to celebrate them too.

How did my candles burn?

I was extremely pleased with the way my candles from A Cheerful Giver burned. All four of these candles burned cleanly. Each one formed a good, steady 1/8 inch wax pool that reached the edges of the jars every time I burned them. I needed to keep the wick trimmed, but these candles burned slowly and lasted a long time. Each candle left the glass jars clean with no residue.

Closing to my review…

I couldn’t be more happy with the candles I tried from A Cheerful Giver. I enjoyed all four of these Summer scents… all of these scents embrace the Summer season, and I do recommend them. Swept Away and Pina Colada were the most beachy and tropical, but after all, they are part of the Candles by the Sea collection for a reason. Sweet Tea and Chardonnay were both very unique and so interesting.

Watch for another A Cheerful Giver review soon, where I’ll be checking out Cinnamon Twist, Banana Nut Bread, Cranberry Boggs and Aunt Kooks Apple Cider.

Cheers!

~ Julia

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