The craft of making soaps, cosmetics, and perfumes can be expensive if you are not careful. However, there are many things you can do to save money while enjoying this great hobby. Here are a few ideas:

1. Save money on containers by recycling the ones you have. To recycle glass or plastic jars and bottles, wash them out with hot, soapy water. Or for a quicker method, run them through your dishwasher.

2. When you finish using the contents of an amber or blue glass round bottle (the type many essential and fragrance oils come in) use it for something else. Use it to store small quantities of essential oils and fragrance oils, or use it to store fragrance blends or small quantities of cosmetic products.

3. For inexpensive cosmetic containers and equipment, visit your local liquidation outlet or dollar store. A liquidation outlet is a store that specializes in reselling the products of a company that has gone out of business and has to get rid of all their merchandise at prices below cost. The liquidation outlet purchases these items and then offers them at greatly reduced prices. Dollar stores sell both liquidated goods and goods produced for the dollar store market. Both liquidation stores and dollar stores are great sources for cheap containers, baskets, ribbon, pots, mixing equipment, and several other items.

4. Save old mayonnaise jars and other large glass jars to use as containers for bath salts. Decorate the lids with acrylic paint or fabric.

5. Inexpensive soap molds can be made from many things around your house. You can use the bottom of cardboard milk cartons, a shoe box (line it with wax paper before using it as a soap mold), empty plastic yogurt containers, muffin pans (if they are aluminum use them for melt and pour soap only), plastic storage containers, and plastic ice trays.

As you can see, there are many ways for soap makers and cosmetic crafters to save money. Just use your imagination and have fun!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ololade Franklin publishes Making Good Scents(TM), the newsletter of handcrafted cosmetics, soaps and perfumes. She also publishes several books on the subject of cosmetic crafting. For information visit Soap Making Business.