I'm maybe six or seven years old. I'm sitting in the driveway outside my Papa's shed in Martinsville, Virginia. The sun is warm on my legs. Birds going crazy in the background, the way they do in Virginia in the summer. He's inside doing whatever it is he does in there, and I could hear it. Tools. Movement. The sound of someone who just *knew* what they were doing.
I walk up and ask him for a hammer. Tell him I'm going to smash some rocks.
He looks at me, says "be careful," and goes right back to work.
I asked this man for a hammer, told him a half thought of a plan, and he handed it over without a second thought. And I sat there in that driveway smashing rocks open, turning them over to look at all the pretty colors inside. I was *obsessed*. But if I'm being honest, it wasn't really about the rocks. It was just nice being out there with him. Martinsville didn't have a whole lot going on, so if he was doing something, you wanted to be nearby.
That's who my Papa was. Earlie Owens, but everyone called him E.O. And that, right there, is where EI·YO comes from.
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A Man Who Made Things
My Papa was a gardener, a handyman, a food canner, a coin collector, a photographer, a prankster. He built birdhouses and step stools in his shop. After he'd finish cutting the grass, he'd lift up the blades on the riding lawn mower and just let me ride around with him — going nowhere in particular, just cruising. He grew a garden every summer that was honestly bigger than it needed to be, and every single year he planted watermelon specifically for me. So much of it that I'd have to take one home when we left. A whole watermelon. In the car. Just because he knew I loved it.
He also taught me how to drive in a middle school parking lot in my grandma's Volkswagen Beetle. I was in middle school. He just handed me the keys.
That was him. He knew what you liked, he knew what you needed, and he trusted you with things before you probably deserved to be trusted. He learned everything from people — a neighbor, a stranger at a hardware store, someone who passed down a recipe — and there was always a story behind what he knew. Always some humanity attached to it. He was soft-spoken and responsible, kind to his core, devoted to his family, and deeply faithful. And if he loved you, he bought you twelve versions of your favorite thing.
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What Handmade Actually Means
I think about intention a lot when it comes to EI·YO.
Not just making something that looks good or sells well, but making something that couldn't exist without the specific person behind it. My Papa understood this without ever calling it that. Every birdhouse, every jar of canned food, every watermelon he put in the ground carried something of him in it. The care was in the object itself. You could feel it.
That's the standard I'm holding this brand to.
When I'm choosing vessels for my candles, I'm thinking about longevity. Stone. Onyx. Cement. Materials you keep, that become part of your home rather than something you toss when the wax runs out. When I'm thinking about scent, I'm thinking about what it feels like to walk into a room and have something shift in you. The way a smell pulls you back somewhere, or settles you into right now.
My Papa would have taken his time with it. So I'm taking mine.
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The Lowe's Moment
A few months ago I was at Lowe's just picking up some stuff. I asked an employee named Frank for help and somehow, the way it goes when you actually slow down and let a conversation happen, this man ended up showing me a photo of his mom. Telling me about his dad teasing him for being cold at the bus stop in Georgia as a kid. Sharing a spaghetti recipe his mom learned from a female Marine, back in the day.
Girl. I'm standing in the middle of Lowe's trying not to cry.
Because that is my Papa. That is *exactly* my Papa. The man who would stop and talk to a stranger anywhere and come home with a new skill, a new story, a new connection. He genuinely believed the people around you have something worth knowing, and if you slow down long enough, they'll tell you.
That moment reminded me of everything I'm trying to do here. EI·YO exists to say: this came from somewhere. From someone. And it matters.
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How the Name Actually Happened
Everyone called my Papa E.O. Just his initials, said out loud. A couple of days after he passed from cancer in 2021, I was sitting with my grief and the word *EI·YO* just came to me out of nowhere. A play on how his name sounded. A real name you could put on something. I wrote it in my notes app and didn't touch it for two years.
When I came back to it, I knew immediately what it was for.
I think I needed that time. I needed to figure out what I was actually building before I understood why the name fit so perfectly. And when it all clicked, I just laughed. Because of course. Of course that's what it was called. He already told me.
I'm not going to pretend that doesn't get me every time. Because it does.
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Why I'll Never Sell This Brand
People ask me why I started a candle business in the middle of a pregnancy, working full time, with about forty other things going on.
Because I tied it to him. And I could never give up on him.
EI·YO is my lifelong art piece. Every time I hear birds in the morning here in Atlanta, I think about Martinsville. I think about that driveway, that shed, that man lifting the blades up so I could ride around with him going absolutely nowhere. I think about my grandma's Volkswagen Beetle in an empty parking lot, and the watermelon he grew just for me, and Frank at Lowe's, and every story my Papa told before that.
I'm making something that lasts. That's the whole point.
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