Iași’s handmade gifts and handmade sweets
Photo by Katerina Nedelcu
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Iași’s handmade gifts and handmade sweets

Here are six locals that turned their passions into sweets and crafts that you can buy for yourself or take home as souvenirs.

Flair Scent

Andra’s workshop is in a house from the last century, with high rooms and iridescent windows, which creates a fairytale atmosphere. She has been working here for more than a year on scented soy wax candles, in different colors and flavors, a craft she discovered six years ago.

Flair Scent candles can be found online, on Facebook, on Instagram or on the website, or in Andra’s chic and vintage workshop, on Albineț Street no. 9.

The flavors of Flair Scent are diverse and change with the season: sweet, floral, fresh, fruity, woody and winter. In the cold season, thanks to the chosen oils, we find aromas of jasmine and incense, patchouli and cloves, but also fire in the stove.

If you want to give an experience as a gift, Flair Scent organizes candle workshops, where they teach you how to pour your own candle. You choose your dish, aroma, glitter and other accessories as you like and you are guided by creativity.

M•i•arte accessories

Ioana and Maria Olariu make jewelry made of polymer clay. They have opened a small family business in a pandemic and you can find their M•i•arte accessories products on Facebook and Instagram.

Jewelry is divided into five categories: femininity, fruit, cosmos, animals and popcorn. Their favorites are the fruit models, such as those with lemon, cherry twigs and strawberries, and the popcorn category contains the most jewelry. A pair of earrings costs around 18-35 lei and all prices are available on their Facebook page. Recently, Ioana and Maria included in the M•i•arte collection bracelets also made of polymer clay.

Laura’s Lavender

Laura’s Lavender can be found online or on Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard in Iași, in the store that can be easily confused with a French boutique. The scent of lavender reigns throughout the room where you can enjoy products that are friendly to nature, but also to the skin.

Laura recommends a natural body scrub with coffee, almonds and lavender (35 lei) and bath salt with pine and tea tree, recommended for children, or eucalyptus and pine, which helps especially breathing (20 lei).

In her purple pastel boutique we also find bath bombs with lavender, cherries, lemon, mint, rose or litsea (10 lei), but also aromatic room oil (30 lei).

Leomi

Benedicta Drobotă brought on the market in Iași the concept of Leomi, artisanal chocolate. Made with cocoa butter, the artisanal chocolate has a higher quality than in stores. The Leomi brand combines the passion for quality and refinement with affordable prices, starting from a homemade bar with crispy hazelnuts (6 lei), to large tablets with dark chocolate and hazelnuts (24 lei).

Leomi Chocolate products are online, where you can find all kinds of assortments, from white chocolate with blackberries and pears, truffles with Belgian chocolate with milk, walnuts and apricots or candies with wine.

Odaia cu Podoabe

In Odaia cu Podoabe, where Adelina and her mother work, you will find mugs with different characters, cockades and brooches with juices, personalized t-shirts and bags, lanterns and other gifts handmade from polymer paste or creative recycling. The room is on Calea Chișinăului no. 27 and online.

The beehive or house-shaped lantern, for example, gives the feeling of warmth to a room, and the mugs and thermal mugs have characters such as a doctor, an educator or a seamstress, but also those for children, such as Elsa and Anna. To order, such a product can be made according to any theme you want.

The price of a personalized mug differs from model to model, but a mug can reach up to 140 lei, a personalized t-shirt can cost around 60 lei, and a set of cutlery costs 90 lei.

Frateria L’Artisan

In Ștefan Buraga’s chocolate shop, Frateria L’Artisan, you will find pralines with creative and unexpected assortments, which you would not think of when you buy a chocolate: lavender, tobacco, red wine or cage.

Stefan also makes custom cakes, which he manages to decorate with marzipan, fresh fruit and white chocolate. In each of the boxes of pralines you can find at Frateria L’Artisan there are 20 different types of chocolate.

The look of the sweets of Frateria immediately catches your eye. You’ll come face to face with colorful pralines, pastel-colored eclairs, matcha and strawberry flavors, and storytelling cakes, like the Pavlova dessert created to celebrate ballerina Anna Pavlova in the golden years of jazz.

A box of pralines, in take-a-guess assortments, because Stefan chooses them to have different tastes, can reach up to 100 lei, depending on their number.

This is a short version of an article that appeared in the Our Iași Newsletter edition on Dec. 7th, 2021. You can find out more about each of the entrepreneurs’ stories here and subscribe to the wonderful Our Iași newsletter here.

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Photo by Flair Scent - Facebook

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A love story with and about the craft of scented soy wax candles. Andra is the mastermind behind this wonderful business producing one-of-a-kind scented candles.
Strada Albineț 3, Iași 700142
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Photo by M•i•arte accessories - Facebook

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Slow-made jewelry handcrafted with passion from polymer clay by Maria & Ioana Olariu. Every piece is unique. You can place orders on their Instagram page.
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Photo by Lavanda Laurei - Facebook

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Lavender helps calm the nervous system, removes insomnia and headaches and has healing and antiseptic effects. Started by Laura in 2015 in Iași, this boutique shop sells soap, body care products, candles, lotions and many more lavender products.
Bulevardul Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt 4, Iași 700259
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Photo by Leomi - Facebook

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Benedicta started her chocolate workshop in Iași and is producing a wide range of fine chocolates. Her passion really shows in the taste and refinement of each piece.
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Photo by Odaia cu podoabe - Facebook

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In the "Room with Ornaments" (Odaia cu podoabe), where Adelina and her mother work, you will find mugs with different characters, cockades and brooches with juices, personalized t-shirts and bags, lanterns and other gifts handmade from polymer paste or creative recycling.
Camera 2, Corp A, Etaj 3, Calea Chișinăului nr. 27, Iași 707252
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Photo by L'Artisan - Facebook

Local products, Sweetshops
In Ștefan Buraga’s chocolate shop, Frateria-L’Artisan, you will find pralines with creative and unexpected assortments, which you would not think of when you buy a chocolate: lavender, tobacco, red wine or cage.
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Photo by pamantiu.ro

Pământiu is Mădălina's wonderful journey to create unique, handmade objects from modelling clay. With a distinctive color palette and style, Mădălina's brooches are the ideal small gift for your loved ones.
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Photo by levisez.ro

Levisez is a local brand of clothes made sustainably from recycled materials (upcycled), 100% natural. Maria and Alexandru started with an idea that turned into a living room project. They now have a vision and plans for the future: "we want to be part of the change that matters". In their workshop they use only upcycled materials - rolls of footage of various sizes recovered from textile factories, which would end up in the landfill - which they turn into clothing. No collection is the same as before, every lot we recover is different. This search gives rise to hybrid ideas, from which drawn drawings become bold cuts, which later become new clothes.
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