Soap & Candles: Expert Guides and Resources

If you want to make your own candles and soaps, you need shopping lists for the basic ingredients for both. Get to know the types of candles you can make: tapers, pillars, or votives — the varieties abound. And when you make soaps, you'll want to know how to fix common problems that affect the appearance and what causes them.

Making candles and soaps at home doesn't call for an arsenal of expensive supplies. Here's a list of essentials candle-making materials you'll need to create your own tapers, pillars and votives: Double boiler: You can improvise by placing a smaller pot on a trivet inside a larger pot. Mold: You can buy fancy metal molds at your local craft store, or you can use household items, such as metal cans or yogurt cups.

Homemade tapers candles are an easy, elegant gift idea for Christmas. Whether you make the taper candles short or tall, the candle-dipping process is straightforward: You dip both ends of a wick into melted wax, let cool, and repeat about 20 to 30 times. You don’t do anything special to create the tapered look; it just naturally happens.

Making your own soap, like making your own candles, doesn’t require a lot of supplies. When making melt-and-pour soap, you can get by pretty inexpensively. Follow this list to know the important supplies for soapmaking.. Double boiler or microwave: You need a heat source to melt your soap, so a double boiler is ideal.

If you’re making candles, you may wonder what each type of candle is called. After all, candles come in a large variety of shapes and sizes. This list helps demystify the terminology: Container: Container candles burn in the actual container that you pour them into. In essence, the container is your mold. Pillar: Pillar candles are sturdy and thick.

Sometimes, your finished homemade soaps just don't look right. Disappointment is natural, but chances are you can still use and enjoy soaps you've made. You'll want to make your soaps to look their best, though, for gift-giving and for selling. Check out this list of common appearance problems and how to solve them.

Homemade soaps of layered colors and scents make wonderful gifts — especially if they've been custom-designed for the recipient. In a layered soap, you alternate colors and scents, all in the same bar. Although they look like you spent a lot of time making them, these visually appealing soaps are a snap to create.

Melt-and-pour soaps are so easy to make that you'll always have a stash of ready-made, homemade gifts on hand. To make melt-and pour soap, you begin with soap base from a craft store. Simply cut off the amount of soap base you need, chop it into cubes, and melt them in the microwave. Melt-and-pour soap is naturally translucent, so you can easily create a clear bar of soap.

Scented homemade soaps make great Christmas gifts. If you prefer not to use caustic chemicals while making soap, then hand-milled soaps are your answer. The only special tool that you really need is a hand grater. The advantages of hand-milling soap are many: You don’t have to work with lye. You can buy a bar of your favorite commercial soap at your local grocery store.