DIY Palettes

If my shadows are in singles/doubles/trios/quads, or just, you know, less than probably ten shadows in one package, I pretty much forget about them. To fix this problem, I've gone ahead and depotted almost all of my shadows, blushes, and bronzers. I've ended up with 3 full shadow palettes and one 1/5 full shadow pallete, one 1/3 full bronzer palette and one 3/4 full blush palette.

To do: find a dvd case or x-box case. Whatever. Remove anything that stick out (the bits that hold the insert and the disc in). Depot your shadows (carefully) in whatever way works best for you. I use heat and a knife. In other words, some shadow aren't stuck on well enough (and are packed firmly enough) that you can just slid a knife in the side and gentle wiggle the shadow out. For most shadows, I use a lighter to soften up the plastic and work in there with my knife until the shadow starts coming out. Softer shadows may start to break. You may jab the knife in your shadow. I did this a couple times. I nicked two of my NARS shadows quite a bit and I thought I was going to cry. (I didn't. I was able to repair my favorite one with a bit of alcohol.)

I use rubber cement to stick the pans to the case.

Below I'm holding up my first two palettes, I made these a few months ago. You can see HiP, NARS, WnW, elf, Prestige, etc etc. All kinds of shadows. It's terribly messy. The palette I made today is much neater.

This is my blush palette. Dunno if you can ID any of the brands, but we've got Lorac, Avon, WnW, elf, etc, etc. Oh and I did NOT nick that LORAC blush. That's where I hit pan. First thing I ever hit pan on, I think.


You can find a million and one tutorials on depotting shadows on youtube and more than a few showing dvd or cd DIY palettes. I highly recommend it because, for someone who owns any size eyeshadow collection at all, you'll find some shades getting forgotten in the back of a drawer. These keeps all the shades more handy.

It might be to your benefit to purchase some magnetic sheets, clean off the bottom of your pans after you depot them, and create a magnetic palette. This allows you to rearrange you palettes. I had no desire to do this, so I just glued them in.

I'm also working on a print out that will tell me which shades are which, so if I every do tutorials or anything, I can say something other than "that pinky goldish shade in the x-box palette"