Clay Pots and Candlelight Connect Culture and Nostalgia
Helen Saldana, owner of Helen’s Scents. Photo by Tar Macias, JEFAS Magazine
By Christina Fernández-Morrow, JEFAS Magazine
At the heart of Des Moines’ bustling downtown farmers market, the air carries more than the usual aromas of fresh produce and street food. It carries memories. Helen Saldana, owner of Helen’s Scents uses her Mexican roots to create hand-crafted candles and soaps that transport her customers to afternoons in grandma’s kitchen, stirring a pot of café de olla, sparking joy for Saldana who has a heart for helping others live a healthy and happy life.
Deep in her final semester of Drake University’s accelerated nursing program, Saldana juggles textbooks and business plans from her home office while her toddler plays nearby. As markets across the state lure hundreds to main streets and corridors in search of unique gems and familiar comforts, Helen’s products are among them. But Saldana’s journey began unexpectedly, during a time of boredom.
“I started during Covid. I took an online class to learn how to make cold-processed soap,” she shares of the first step toward what would become her business. While the process is fairly simple, using oils, fats and lye, it takes 4-6 weeks to cure into an effective and safe cleaning agent. As she progressed to experimenting with different types of oils and creating her own formulas, she discovered that many soap makers use those same oils to make candles and she decided to give it a shot. “I started off making little candles, in clear jars – the basic ones that you have at home,” she says of her early efforts.
Clay Pots and Childhood Memories
Then one day she got an idea drawn straight from her roots. Instead of plain glass jars, why not use the vibrant Mexican clay pots that had adorned her home for years? Created for serving food, Saldana knew the pots could withstand the heat of the melted wax.
“It actually made the candles smell so much better,” she says of switching from glass to clay. This allowed Saldana to incorporate her culture into the hobby she had grown to love. Plus, the bright colors of the hand-painted pots popped, making the candles look more decadent. The clay pots, which she imports from her family’s pottery business in Mexico City, are custom made for her, and she requests special designs and colors based on what her clients prefer. An additional advantage is that the pots are reusable, so she offers a deal when customers return their pots to fill with a new scent, or their old favorites.
Customer response inspired her to dig deeper into the smells she recalled from her childhood. “Horchata, churro, and flan are my more popular scents,” she comments. “I get a lot of comments, people saying it reminds them of a time they were in Mexico. My Latino customers tell me they love them because it represents them, and they’re homey and cute.”
Helen Saldana, owner of Helen’s Scents. Photo by Tar Macias, JEFAS Magazine
Two Paths, One Goal
Saldana loves that her products encourage moments of self-care, when the smell of one of her candles sparks nostalgia, or a soap helps their skin feel smooth and moisturized.
Helping others is in her nature. That’s why she chose a career in nursing. “It’s flexible,” she says of a nurse’s schedule. “You can work three days and then have four days off,” which she feels fits well with her business.
But days off are something Saldana doesn’t anticipate any time soon. She dreams of moving her operation from her home to a space dedicated to her equipment and creations.
“More than anything, I would like to have my own studio and host candle-making parties,” she says recalling a recent event where she helped a local Girl Scout troop create their own candles. “It was a group of little girls, and they were all Latinas. It was so inspiring.”
For Saldana, her candles and soaps are a work of pride that merge her love of wellness and culture. She is grateful when someone shares the memories evoked by her scents, or how her special mix of fruit and seed oils in her soaps transformed their skin. Those moments of bliss she creates for others fulfill her in ways that make the long nights of work feel worth it. She appreciates the care customers take when choosing one of her products. “It’s for your space, where you rest the most,” she reflects, emphasizing the deep connection between self-care and the scents we surround ourselves with, creating connections that last well beyond the burning of a wick.
