Hi there! I hope you all had a great Super Bowl weekend. Mine was busy but fun, and for once didn’t include any makeup appointments! After the previous few weekends it was definitely nice to get a breather. And, I finally found the chance to try de-potting some eyeshadow!

For those of you unfamiliar with de-potting shadows, it involves melting and softening the plastic part of eyeshadow (or blushes or powders) so the glue holding the metal eyeshadow pan in place also melts and you can gently pry it out. By de-potting and placing into a palette, you save tons of space which is essential in a pro makeup kit – or anyone tight on makeup storage space. While standalone MAC stores sell just the eyeshadow pans individually so you can custom make your own palettes, de-potting is an easy solution to get the rest of your eyeshadows into those palettes too.  My MAC shadows are taking up way too much bulky space in makeup bags in my kit so it was time to give it a try. I was always nervous that depotting my makeup would result in damaging it so that’s why I held off for so long. If I’d known how easy this was, I wish I would’ve done this years ago! Keep on reading and I’ll walk you through the steps.

De-potting tools

So all you need for de-potting are 3 things: the product you want to depot (my much loved and used trax eyeshadow is pictured here), a butter knife, and a lighter. Though next time using a candle might be easier!

De-potting steps

Firstly, you’ll want to separate the piece actually holding the eyeshadow pan from the rest of the eyeshadow container. I did this by wedging a butter knife into the front of where the eyeshadow closes and after some jiggling about, the top piece easily popped off.

I then flipped that plastic piece over and heated it with my lighter to soften the plastic. I used the butter knife to separate the eyeshadow pan, but the plastic hadn’t properly melted. I proceeded to apply way too much force and you can see how I dented the pan. Not wanting to hurt my eyeshadow pan anymore, I heated it some more and the plastic was finally warm enough that the the pan separated with the most gentle prying of my butter knife.

My de-potted shadow living happily ever after

Now that I’d separated the eyeshadow pan away from the plastic, I didn’t want to leave the label with the name of the shadow behind. So I heated the bottom of the eyeshadow for literally a second, and the label popped right off when I went in with my butter knife. The eyeshadow pan still was a bit gluey on the bottom from melting the glue off so the label stuck right on.

I dropped my newly separated and labeled shadow pan into my MAC pro palette and it lived happily ever after alongside All that Glitters and Smut. This was such a success! I can’t wait to de-pot all my shadows and be able to have my entire collection within a few neatly contained palettes. No more sifting through compartments and makeup bags in my makeup kit.

And don’t think that I’ll be throwing away the plastic casing of the shadow! I’ll take it into the MAC store for the Back 2 MAC recycling program to exchange for one eyeshadow, lipstick or lipglasss for every 6 containers I have 🙂

Have you ever tried your hand at de-potting? It really, really helps with keeping makeup organized. And I’ve seen on youtube that people place their de-potted products into cd cases, DVD cases and metal pencil boxes! Let me know if you try it out 🙂