Since today is a holiday, I took advantage of the free time to consolidate some of my eye shadows and blushes. If you watch the beauty guru videos on YouTube, you’re probably already familiar with the depotting process for make-up, but I’ll post my process of depotting and consolidating here just in case anyone is interested.
I really hate having all these individual and trios of eye shadow and blushes because even though I don’t have very much make-up (at all!), I find I forget what I have and usually don’t bother opening up all those separate containers to apply my make up in the morning. So I used points from my favourite nail polish company to order a Z-Palette, which is an empty shallow box, lined in a magnet sheet to hold makeup in place. Below is a pic of my zebra-print Z-Palette before I depotted all my eye shadows:
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| My Z-Pallet and shadows before I consolidated |
The Body Shop makeup was the easiest to depot. I set my flat iron to the hottest temperature, removed the top from the eyeshadow case (it unhinges easily and reattaches as well), then set the shadow on the flat iron for a few seconds.
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| Heat for only a few seconds to loosen and remove the label if you want to keep it. |
After heating it for a few seconds, the label on the back peels off easily and can be reserved for later if you want to keep it.
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| Peel off the label |
Then you need to heat the case a bit longer so the heat travels from the outside of the case, into the glue that attaches the metal pot to the eye shadow case. So I put it back on the flat iron (not pictured) and when it was ready (it takes a few minutes, but keep an eye on it or the plastic could melt) I poked the tip of my craft blade into the hole in the backside of the shadow case. This pops the metal eye shadow pot right out of the case- easy peasy!
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| Pop the metal pot right out of the case! |
The if you like, you can go ahead a re-attach the label sticker to the bottom of the metal pot so you remember the brand and shade for future reference. You can use a cotton swab with alcohol to remove the glue from the pot, but I didn’t really care to do that, since it wasn’t sticky after it cooled and you won’t see it when the makeup is in its new palette.
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| Empty Body Shop case and de-potted, re-labelled eye shadow. |
The other brands that I have don’t have a hole in the bottom, so I had to pry them out by wedging the thin edge of my blade between the plastic case and the metal pot. Some popped out easily (Cover Girl), and some required the case be broken on the edge (Rimmel and Mark).
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| The case of my Rimmel Trio had to be mangled and broken to get the shadow out but the shadow itself was unharmed. |
It took me about 20 minutes to depot my small stash of eye shadows and one blush. The Mark set of 9 was the trickiest because there were lip glosses on the flip side, but I figured it out!.
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| Empties! |
Some companies (like the Body Shop, and I think MAC, but I don’t have any MAC so I can’t say for sure) offer a discount for new product when you return old packaging to be recycled, so I’ll hang onto the ones I can return.
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| All my shadow and blush together, with room to grow! |
I LOVE having them all together!
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| The closed Z Palette |
I love that it has a large window so you can see exactly what’s inside! Now hopefully I’ll use them more!
