Maide's Melts

About Sarah

The short version: one woman, a workshop in Ilfracombe, and a lot of soy wax.

Cozy workspace with warm lighting and craft supplies

How it started

In January 2019, I was looking for something to keep my hands busy during the long evenings. I'd always loved candles and home fragrance, but the shop-bought wax melts I'd tried were either sickly sweet or had that artificial "clean cotton" smell that doesn't actually smell like cotton at all.

So I ordered some soy wax, a handful of fragrance oils, and a cheap silicone mould. The first batch was terrible. The second was worse. The third one, though, was a lavender blend that actually smelled like the plants in my nan's garden, and that was the moment I got hooked.

What I use

Every melt starts with natural soy wax. It's more expensive than paraffin, and it can be fussier to work with, but it burns cleaner and throws scent better in a burner. The fragrance oils come from two UK suppliers I've tested extensively. I go through about 40 samples to find one I'll actually sell.

The packaging is all recyclable or compostable. The snap bar moulds are reusable silicone. I don't use any synthetic colourants anymore. Some of the melts have a natural tint from the oils themselves, but most are just the creamy off-white of plain soy wax.

I pour everything in my workshop at the back of the house. It's a converted shed with proper ventilation, a temperature-controlled wax melter, and a digital scale accurate to 0.1g. Not glamorous, but it does the job right.

Home fragrance products arranged neatly on a shelf

Why Ilfracombe?

I've lived in North Devon most of my life. When I create new scents, I pull from what I know: the salt air at Tunnels Beach, wild garlic in the woods above Lee, the way a log fire smells when you walk past a pub on Fore Street in December. These are real smells from real places, not abstract concepts dreamed up in a marketing meeting.

Some customers have told me the scents remind them of holidays in Devon. That's probably the nicest thing anyone's said about my work.

Browse the full scent range