The word for that is commonly used on the internets seems to be “depotting”, not “de-potting” or any other kind of “-potting”. Is this even a real word? Anyway – the depotting I am referring to today has nothing to do with “Office Depot”, “Butt Depot”, and it won’t get you high. I’m talking about how to take an eyeshadow out of it’s packaging and put it into another palette to save space. No more cluttered countertops!

Here is what you need:

- A flat iron
- Some parchment paper or wax paper to protect the flat iron
- A paring knife
- A free form magnetic palette of some kind. The ZPalette is pictured.
- Eyeshadows! Any kind will work as long as it comes in a metal pan.

Optional:

- Mini magnets (Some eyeshadows (like MAC) aren’t magnetic
- Bully Hill wine and a hilarious cactus margarita glass since I’m writing this on New Year’s Eve. WOOOO!

Let’s begin:

Step 1: Heat up the flat iron. Put the parchment paper over it to protect it.

Step 2: Open one of the eyeshadows and place it on the hot plate for about 4 minutes or so. It needs to get really hot and melt the glue that holds the pan into the plastic pot. Don’t worry, you won’t burn your eyeshadow. The worst that can happen is that you’d melt the packaging. This is why you have parchment paper on your flat iron.

Step 3: Use a paring knife and CAREFULLY pry the metal pan away from the plastic pot. I did mine too quickly and ended up denting my pan and breaking one of my eyeshadows. (NOTE: Drinking wine is probably not a good idea during this operation.) If it isn’t coming up just put it back on the iron for a few more minutes. (Don’t worry you can fix broken eyeshadows WITH SCIENCE. Click here to see how.)

Step 4: Once you get the eyeshadow pan free of the plastic pot, set it aside. If your eyeshadow has a label, quickly peel the label off of the back of the plastic pot while it is still hot and stick it on the back of the metal pan so that you will always know what shade it is. (If you are using a brand that has the shade printed on the metal pan you can skip this step obviously.)

Step 5: See if your eyeshadow will stick to your magnetic palette. If it doesn’t, then you have to attach a magnet to the back of the eyeshadow. My Stila shadows stuck right out of the box, but my MAC shadows aren’t magnetic so I had to attach a magnet to them. You can buy stick on magnets at any craft store.

Step 6: Stick the eyeshadows to whatever free form palette you have. I am using a large ZPalette here.

This technique will work for anything that comes in a metal pan – even blush, foundation, or oddly shaped eyeshadows. I plan on using this technique to get the swarm of plastic packaging on my countertops under control. Then I’m going to take the MAC pots back to MAC. If you bring 6 of them back you get a free lipstick!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 31st, 2010 at 9:43 pm and is filed under General, Glam Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.