POWELL - A plant synonymous with Wyoming's arid desert country - often cursed, sometimes praised - is a precious ingredient for a business venture by Christine Shuffield of Powell.

Shuffield owns "Breath of the West," a candle-making company known for its Wyoming sagebrush candles. The company originated with Iva Brown in the Frannie area in 1928. Since then, it has been handed down or sold from woman to woman. Shuffield bought the company in 2003.

"It's a working antique," Shuffield said while working in her backyard shop.

And, thanks to Wyoming first lady Nancy Freudenthal, Shuffield now has at least one pair of candles in every state in the country. Freudenthal recently ordered a pair of tapered sagebrush candles to present to the first lady of each state at a banquet in Washington, D.C. Before that, Shuffield's candles had found homes in at least 39 states.

She also owns a pair of tapers (tall candles for candleholders) that were made by Iva Brown. Shuffield's grandmother bought those candles from Brown back in the 1940s.

More recently, the company went through several owners within a few years before Shuffield purchased it.

"I do think the last few people who bought it thought it would be easy money," she said. "It's not that easy."

In fact, a batch of "Rock `n' Sage" candles, formed with a mold in crushed white marble and made of wax with a sagebrush ring in a marble shell, takes about 25 hours to make.

"I've lost track of how many times I handle each candle," she said.

Tapered candles, formed in metal molds with sagebrush embedded in the wax at the base of the candles, also take many hours to make.

And, it turns out, there's a lot to know about sagebrush.

For instance, sagebrush is suitable for use in scented candles only for a few weeks each year. Weather dependent, that's usually in May. Before that, the bushes are scruffy after weathering through a winter. After that, the leaves are too long and stiff to use.

"When it's the right time, we pick and pick and pick," Shuffield said. She stores the picked sagebrush sprigs in her freezer for yearlong use in candle making.

One recent day, Shuffield and her mother, Virginia Lindsay, work tediously to cut tiny sprigs of sagebrush leaves off from small branches Shuffield has taken out of her freezer and placed between the folds of a towel.

They place the sprigs in rings around the top of wax poured into molds formed in wet marble in a large, table-shaped tray. Interestingly, as the sprigs were placed around the forming candles, each candle takes on a slightly darker hue.

"I can tell who put the sagebrush on each one," Shuffield said. "Each person has a different style."

When the sagebrush rings all are in place, Shuffield heats wax - which is made from a secret formula - to just the right temperature. It must be 10 degrees hotter than the temperature the wax underneath the ring was poured at in order to fuse the two layers together, she said.

As she pours the top layer of wax, the sagebrush leaves begin to sizzle, much like food does when it's placed in frying oil. The sagebrush scent, already a pleasant presence in the room, swells and becomes more fragrant. The hot wax preserves the sagebrush and infuses its scent throughout the candle, Shuffield said.

When the wax cools, Shuffield takes the newly-formed candles out of the bed of crushed rocks and polishes each one with a pair of old pantyhose. She then wraps each one in plastic wrap and topped it with a "Breath of the West" sticker and instruction card.

Shuffield said her "Rock `n' Sage" candles are her best sellers, with people admiring their dish-like shape and rock crust.

"I tell people it takes a really long time to stick every rock on them," she said with a mischievous grin. "I'm always surprised how many people believe it."

Though labor-intensive, Shuffield said the work to make the candles is worth it because she enjoys the finished product so much.

"Each one is like my baby," she said. "I pull a taper out of a mold and it's like, I created this. It's the same with the Rock `n' Sage."