The Art of Pressed Botanicals

Every Candera candle starts long before the wax is poured — with a flower, pressed flat and dried until it's ready to hold its color for years.

Choosing the botanicals

We look for blooms with structure: pansies, hydrangea petals, lavender sprigs, thin fern leaves. Anything too thick or too wet won't press cleanly, and it won't survive being suspended in hot wax.

Pressing and drying

Fresh cuttings are layered between paper and pressed under weight for one to two weeks, depending on the season and how much moisture the flower is holding. Rushing this step is the most common way to ruin a good bloom.

Setting the wax

Once a botanical is fully dry, it's arranged by hand against the inside wall of the vessel before the wax is poured around it. This is why:

• No two candles ever look exactly alike
• Placement is done one candle at a time, not molded or mass-produced
• The flower you see is the flower that was growing a few weeks earlier

It's slower than printing a pattern on a label — but it's the whole point.