The oils produced by West Lothian's shale oil industry were rich in wax. When the oil was cooled, tiny flakes of wax formed which could be separated from the oil, then purified by squeezing out remaining oil in a giant filter press.

Only two of the local shale oil companies produced candles in any quantities: Young's at their Addiewell works (which operated between about 1870 and 1930), and the Broxburn oil company in Broxburn (which operated between about 1880 and 1950).

The Young's company were particularly famous for their decorative candles, some of which were hand painted and packed into ornate cardboard boxes. Many seem to have been given as gifts, and the museum have a number of examples that must have survived as souvenirs rather than being used like everyday candles.

The idea for the advert came about when one of out younger visitors suggested that we take a photo of him hand painting a candle.This we did and animated the hand to make it appears that it was actually painting. We also took this one stage further and asked our visitors to design their own candle and these could be use in the advert.

We had such good response that we had the difficult job of choosing only a few to appear in our display of candles scene. We arranged them and added animated flames to show of the designs that were created. Thanks to Brendan (3), Carrie (7), Victoria (10), Jade, Lisa, Scott (8), Iona (8), Amy (13) and many more. Next we thought how decorative the actual boxes that the candles came in were. We took photos of the box fronts and labels and adapted them to appear in our advert.

The slogan we chose was “Lighting you way at the end of the day”, so we needed someone to hold a candle as if they were using it to light their way. We had a volunteer (Christopher) who instead of holding a candle held a torch which he shone in his face. In the advert the torch was covered up with a flame and the light made to look like candle light. Finally excellent vocals were recorded by Robert aged 9.