I like to light a candle in the evening for an hour or two to help me unwind and relax, as well as fragrance the room nicely. Because of this, I do end up getting through quite a few candles, so I try to shop around for cheap ones if they smell okay. I was in Poundland the other day picking up some essentials when I noticed an area with some candles on. The Coley and Gill candle in a tin range stood out to me and I went through having a sniff of them all. Many of the scents were things which I would normally like such as limes and citrus scents, however they were all pretty horrific when I had a sniff, and I was about to leave until I noticed just one vanilla candle floating at the back of the shelf. I had a quick sniff, it seemed okay and I went ahead and bought it - it was only a pound so I couldn't really complain!

The design of this is actually quite sweet, and I don't think anybody would assume you only spent 100 shiny pennies on it. The candle comes in a lovely, sturdy tin which is easy to open and close, and it also details the scent on the front and a lovely little image to accompany it. Once the candle was opened, it was typically how you would expect a vanilla candle to appear, a cream shade in colour. The wick itself was white which is unusual, as many candles I buy have black wicks. The wick itself did seem of a pretty poor quality from when I opened it, and it was also extremely long which meant that I did have to cut it short quite a bit. As far as presentation goes though, this little candle was pretty impressive.

It is French Vanilla scented, and although this is perhaps not my first choice of scents, it is still one I will happily purchase. The good news is that this candle was not too sickly in scent which I find with a lot of other vanilla candles, however the bad news then follows. As you can imagine, it doesn't have the luxurious scent you may find in candles such as Yankee Candles, however when you smell it at first before lighting it just about smells vanilla ish... When lit, although there is a vanilla tinge to it, it started to smell quite plastic like and artificial, and to be honest not at all that pleasant. I was really disappointed with the scent, but what can you expect when you pay such a low price?

Although not completely happy with the scent, I thought I would just let the candle keep burning as there was no point in wasting it and the smell was not so god awful that I could not put up with it. To my surprise, after about the third time I lit the candle it stopped working. I was baffled because the wick was of a decent length and there was almost still a full tin of wax to be used it. It turns out that the wick had obviously fallen out of place at the bottom and this must have affected the candle's burning. After trying to fiddle around with it for a bit, I could not get it to relight so I completely gave up on it. What a waste of time!

Overall, a candle I would urge you all to avoid unless you are on a very small budget! There are better quality candles in Primark and supermarkets for only a few pounds more which smell lovely and do actually work! I suppose for £1.00 this candle was bearable, however mine was obviously faulty which I was not happy with it. A very bad experience with this candle from Coley & Gill, and I don't think I will be trying out any more of their products. Sorry! Thanks for reading.