Scotland-based Laura Thomas is an interiors blogger and designer who runs her own bedding and homeware brand Laura Thomas Linens. The brand started in 2012 when Laura, as an expat Scot living in New Zealand, couldn’t find any good quality egyptian cotton bedding or duvet sets. Now she sells stylish bedding (including beautiful embroidered cotton) at affordable prices as well as blogging about DIY projects, decorating tips and clean, white interiors.
She’s certainly a girl after my own heart – ‘Laura Thomas Linens has evolved from my love of white bed linen and going to sleep wrapped around crisp, white bed sheets,’ she says. Second to lovely white sheets, in my opinion, is a softly scented candle to light just before bedtime (it was one of my Five Steps to a Better Night’s Sleep on the blog the other week, see the post here). Laura hand makes and hand pours her own collection of scented candles, using 100% soy wax, essential and fragrance oils, and they smell divine.
Inspired by her time in New Zealand and her old garden in the Bay of Islands, Laura’s latest scent is Flowers, a heady, summery mix of rose neroli and lemon blossom. It has just the right balance of sweetness and citrus, not too overpowering, but delicate, with subtle floral tones that gradually build up as the candle burns. I lit it on a balmy summer night, with the balcony doors open and the breeze gently blowing in, it was instantly calming, reminding me of long summer evenings lounging in the garden. She also has a lime and basil candle as well as a lavender one, my favourite scent, that’s on my wish list (they’re £15-19 depending on the size). I was keen to find out a little bit more about Laura and how she creates her wonderful scents, scroll down for a little interview:
What is your background, how did you end up doing what you are doing now?
My background is in hospitality. I worked for a couple of banks in London before having enough money to buy my first cafe in New Zealand (I was living out there at the time). My husband and I built up and sold 4 cafes. It was during this time that I feel in love with interior design – refurbishing every cafe was such a pleasure and interiors became my new obsession!
Where does your inspiration come from? And in particular for the Flowers scent?
My inspiration comes from my own personal taste. My first candle scent was lavender as it is such a beautiful and distinctive smell. I love the connection between lavender, relaxing and getting to sleep. I first started using lavender essential oil, when my two little girls were babies and I would put a couple of drops into their bath every night to help them sleep.
Now living back in my native Scotland my Flowers candle was heavily inspired by my time in New Zealand. My old garden in the Bay of Islands was part of a carved up orchard, so it have rows of orange, lemon and grapefruit trees. In the spring the scented blossoms were truly like none I had ever smelled before. Friends used to comment on the beautiful perfume in the air when they came to visit, so I wanted to recreate that scent for my home in Scotland and started to mix essential oils. After a good bit of experimenting I came up with my new Flowers scent of Rose, Neroli and Lemon Blossom.
How does your design process work, how do you create the candles and scents?
The design process behind a new scent is a rather lengthy one. I like to combine two or three scents. Firstly I mix small quantities of the scents into a closed jar. I then take notes on what I smell every day for a week to see what happens after the process of evaporation has occurred. It’s amazing how some scents smell wonderful together on initial mixing and then after a day or two, they smell completely different. Wax only holds a certain percentage of essential or fragrance oils so for my first two years of making candles it was trial and error. Excitingly I’m experimenting with bees wax at the moment for future candles! Now I have my formula tapped, I’m afraid to say I’m not going to be spilling the beans on what it is…
What does the average day look like for you?
After dropping my two daughters at school, I will go for a walk along the beach before settling into some work with a good coffee. I then work until 2.45pm (usually eating lunch at my desk) when I pick the girls up again. I then work for around 3-4 hours again into the evening. My work consists of everything you would do to get a business off the ground from sales, SEO and website maintenance, accounts, marketing, designing bedding, making candles, general admin, blog research and blog posting. It’s a never ending list to work from!
What does the future hold for you?
Laura Thomas Linens will have a big online presence and become a recognised brand of all things linen as well as good quality strongly scented candles. Every day is a little push in that direction. My interior design blog LTID was set up to run along side and promote Laura Thomas Linens however it has grown legs and moved off as an entity of it’s own. I love PR and now work with three London Interior PR companies and gained sponsorship from Dulux for a forthcoming renovation project I have!
Thankyou for chatting to me Laura, now I’m off to relax to the sweet smell of rose neroli and lemon blossom!
All images my own
Disclosure: The candle was kindly given foc for the purpose of this post, all thoughts and opinions, as always, are my own.
