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.

You can make gift baskets filled with scented bath items to give as gifts to family and friends at Christmas time. Consider making bath salts and massage oils; both are great gift ideas. Simple instructions are included here: Bath salts: You have two options: You can purchase the bath salts in your local craft store and add your personal touch by scenting with essential oils.

That crackle finish on candles you see in stores, is easy to replicate on your homemade candles. Add a crackle finish to create some visual interest on an otherwise plain candle. Your homemade Christmas gift will have a bit of extra dimension. Create cracks in your candle by overdipping and freezing it several times.

Homemade candles are budget-friendly Christmas gifts, but save even more money by using household containers as candle molds. Free candle molds are everywhere in your house, if you know where to look. For starters, open your kitchen cupboard. Unique jars, glasses, coffee cups, or salad bowls all make interesting candle containers, where you don’t remove the finished candle from the item.

Homemade gifts are always appreciated. This basic molded candle is an inexpensive gift idea and even better, you can customize the candle colors and scents with your recipients in mind. Why not start a new Christmas tradition and give homemade gifts to family and friends? Basic molded candles are great for Christmas gifts.

Making soap for Christmas can be a creative endeavor. You can embed objects in your soaps to make them really special. Embedded soaps look like a million bucks, but this gift fits even a small budget. You can really let your creativity go wild with this if you know the criteria for choosing appropriate items. Use your head when thinking of objects to embed.

If you're making candles for Christmas gifts, embellish them by embedding decorative items. You’ve likely seen a candle that has some object lodged inside it, such as shells or wax chunks. Gel candles, in particular, are known for their seascape and fruit effects. But paraffin wax can spotlight objects like shells, marbles, and flowers just as well as gel can.

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.

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.