Making Soap and Candle products is a great home business and I highly recommend doing both together. Partly and mostly because many of the supplies are interchangable. You need to be careful with some of the chemicals, scents and colorants and be sure to have them labeled correctly and to use them correctly, as some can be used for both and some for just one or the other.

Always use the most natural ingredients you can find available. This is what I do with the products I make. Obtaining books with techniques, recipes and ideas is highly recommended by me. There are many recipes available free on the internet, I do also carry some recipes in my storefront. To be as knowlegable as possible. You will always learn as you go along.

Ebay is a great place to find matterials at great discounts for any craft projects. Also find wholesalers for items you will use the most such as waxes, soap bases and containers. Many companies offer these things in bulk at great discounts from retail store. In my store I do offer what I can for candle making and soap making supplies, as I often end up with extras.

Offering many products with the same scents is also highly recommended by me. In people's desire for aromatheropy this can allow them to buy many products from you of the same scent allowing them to have a strong theme of fragrance in their home. It also makes putting together gift baskets much easier.

I highly recommend having an Ebay store, it is a great way to inventory and structure your products. It also allows you to have and maintain an inventory so you do not have to constantly relist your items, allowing you time to focus on building up your inventory and buisiness. This helps as once you have an inventory doing craft fairs and placing items in  real stores becomes alot easier to do.

If you have an Ebay store, making use of custom pages to list helpful information to better educated people on your business and products, this is a very nice tool.

My best tip for soap makers is to find herbology pages and study properties and benefits of herbs in skin care. Knowing as much as you can about oils and fats and mixtures. There are alot of benefits that spices and herbs have to offer in health care and skin care.

My best tip for candle making is buy your supplies in bulk. Use the right chemicals for the right job. Using natural waxes is less pollutive and they do not release as much carcinogens as parrafin waxes. Cotton cored wicks and cotten wicks do not release as much carcinogens as well. I would recommend when you can use natural waxes with cotton or cotton cored wicks. I find a 50/50 bees wax and soy wax blend to be very nice for container candles.

Know your scent yields per wax and fragrance types, I always use the maximum scent yield in all my products. Always enjoy making what you make, I find this to be helpful.