SPEARFISH - At a small warehouse on the outskirts of Spearfish, Maria Harbert and her crew are whipping up chocolate-scented body butters, massage candles, brightly colored sands and other ingredients of love.

Harbert's business, Moon Glow Candle Supplies & Body Products, is a wholesale dealer in candle-making supplies and the basic ingredients for soy-based body products marketed by other companies.

Now, with Valentine's Day approaching, Harbert has launched her own retail line built around the Skin2Love Botanical Chocolate Collection. Products include body butters, body washes and lip balms, all made from absolute cocoa oil extracted from the cacao bean.

"A lot of people were taking our products to the retail market themselves. … One day, I just looked at it and said: 'Why are we just selling supplies? We have an awesome product,'" Harbert said.

So far, her retail line is sold at Maddison's Styling Salon and PINK 629 in Spearfish, as well as retailers in New York and on the Moon Glow Web site, www.moonglowcandles.com.

Moon Glow Candle Supplies & Body Products has been evolving ever since Harbert started it Jan. 1, 2000, in her kitchen. The day before she launched the company, Harbert had spent a lot of money on scented candles for a New Year's Eve party. "I looked at my husband and said, 'We can do this,'" she said.

At the time, she was living in northern California, and she began making scented candles for sale. But a lot of people were making candles, and Harbert saw there was more demand for candle-making supplies. So Moon Glow became a wholesale supplier of wicks, waxes and other candle-making supplies.

Before long, soy wax became a popular candle product. As she developed sources for soy wax, Harbert discovered there was an emerging market for soy-based body products. She shifted gears again.

She found a cosmetics lab that could manufacture soy-based lotions, body butters and other products. Moon Glow became a wholesale supplier of body products.

Meanwhile, California was becoming too crowded, and she had friends who had moved to Spearfish. In December 2003, Maria and her husband, Kevin Harbert, packed up their family and joined their friends in Spearfish. And she brought her business with her.

And the business is still evolving.

She spent three years developing a line of massage candles. Made from soy wax and shea butter, the scented candle burns inside a tin container much like any other candle. But the melting temperature of this candle is so low that you can dip your fingers into the pool around the flame and spread it on your skin - painlessly.

The melted "wax" has a texture just a little thicker than baby oil, and it rubs easily into the skin. It can be used as a scented candle or as a massage oil - or both.

And a surprising new product line is colored sand used in wedding ceremonies. Moon Glow buys fine white sand in bulk and mixes it with various dyes to produce brightly colored sands. Moon Glow has nearly 70 sand colors designed to match the bridal colors sold through David's Bridal retail chain.

Called sand ceremonies, sand-for-sand ceremonies or unity sand ceremonies, these rituals are becoming a popular part of modern weddings. The bride and the groom each bring to the ceremony a small container of sand, each a different color. They pour their sands into a third container, mixing the colors together. The mixing of the sands is meant to symbolize the mixing of their lives.

Sometimes other family members, such as children from a previous marriage, add their own colored sand to the mix.

Moon Glow started selling colored sand last August, and Harbert said it has become a big business for the little company. The sand is packaged in plastic bags and shipped all over the country.

In addition, Moon Glow has sold colored sand to the Neiman Marcus retailer for use in window displays. The producers of "Spider-Man 3" also bought colored sand from Moon Glow. Harbert said she isn't exactly sure what role the sand played in the movie, but she was happy to supply it to the producers.

Contact Dan Daly at 394-8421 or dan.daly@rapidcityjournal.com