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Talia Hodge
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Talia Hodge
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Talia Hodge
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Talia Hodge
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Talia Hodge
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Talia Hodge
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Talia Hodge
A chargrilled patty topped with melting cheese, lettuce, tomato and pickles between buttery buns — this cheeseburger may look good enough to eat, but it’s actually a candle.
Kimberly Ochsenbein hand-molds each faux ingredient once her all-natural soy wax is cool enough to touch. Then she paints it with wax dye and adds a cotton wick to create the ultra-realistic honey-butter-roll-scented candle. The process takes a whopping 15 hours.
“It’s a lot of work, a lot of patience,” says the owner of Akron Lights Candle Co., which she started in 2021.
If you’re craving sweet aromas, light a candle that looks like a slice of strawberry cheesecake, a jarred birthday cake candle or an Oreo cookie-shaped wax melt. The double-walled candle based on Starbucks’ strawberry and coconut milk Pink Drink refresher is complete with ice cubes made from gel wax molded in an ice cube tray, surrounded by light pink soy wax. Some of Ochsenbein’s TikTok videos of the strawberries-and-cream-scented candle, which started as a subscription-based candle of the month and is now offered year-round, have gotten tens of thousands of views each, with comments pouring in.
“The majority of them are like, Oh my gosh, I can’t even believe that,” she says. “I had already sold 536 units within 10 minutes of releasing it.”
