diy palettes

[zus]

Yesterday I made a couple of magnetic palettes and I thought I'd share them here as I made them for my SN shadows. I press my eye shadows and I couldn't settle on a practical way to store them because I like to shuffle the colours around to make new combinations every once in a while. Freestyle palettes seemed like the best option but I thought before I spend money on an overpriced palette made of cardboard I'd have a go making my own. They're not the sturdiest but I'm using them at home and they're just for me so I'm pleased

Oh and the colours in the photos:
Cabin Fever, Shewolf, Sapphire
Crush, Heartthrob, Aubergine
Martian, Lunar, Intergalactic

[LT16]

Looks awesome!!!

[Cupcake]

Pleased? I'd be over the moon! That looks incredible and I particularly like the way the colours look next to each other. That's the one thing I miss about loose minerals in jars rather than having them in palettes. Gosh that really is pretty, well done you!

What binder do you use for pressing, just out of curiosity?

[Oxana124]

That looks great, awesome job!
I press all my eyeshadows too, but I buy empty palettes off eBay to use, or those $1 ELF ones from Target.
I was having trouble too with all the jars and powders, having them all in pressed version right in front of you(I have 28 pan palettes) is so convenient and allows me to use more of those colors I would have forgotten about.

[frckls]

*Scream!* I was just surfing off the net today looking at the possibilities of pressing my SN shadows! There are a lot of tutorials for doing it with MAC pigment and other loose shadows but I rarely seen any with SN shadows. And if there's any, the result was not as expected. And I was afraid to ruin my SN shadows babies.

So, do they lose any oomph/color/intensity/wowness/etc?? I'm curious!!

[zus]

Aw thanks
The shadows in the photos are actually 'forgotten' ones that didn't fit in my palettes so I put them away and forgot about them, oops. If I still forget now, imagine how bad it was when they were all still in jars!

It's good to hear a the ELF palettes work for you Oxana, I was looking at those online a while ago. I have a small one from Coastal Scents (and a big one, with their huge logo plastered on the front ) and it's pretty handy to have for travelling. Are the ELF ones magnetised?

As for the pressing itself, I haven't lost much oomph so far! In fact I find that the oomphier the shadow, the easier it is to press. I have made some brick hard shadows that require lots of rubbing to get any colour on the brush though (I guess officially they're ruined)! The amount of medium doesn't seem to matter as much for shimmery shades as it does for the more matte ones, so it's easy to add a couple drops too many of medium to the (semi)mattes and mess up. Once the mixture is too wet it dries up very hard. Now I just try to remember that it's easier to re-press a shadow with too little medium but there's no fixing one with too much...

The medium is use is EZ Prez from Coastal Scents by the way.

[Cupcake]

Thanks for the info, Zus. I'm yearning to give this a try. If folks have good tips or know where best to source the palettes / little round pans in the U.K., please feel welcome to message me.

Thanks for the inspiration!

[Oxana124]

frkls-I have a video on pressing, in the video I press 2 colors into 1 pan because someone asked me how to do that, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone, but it would be no different for just one color.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gwboWo3z04
I like to use Fractionated Coconut oil, it is my favorite pressing medium, it does not go bad. You can also use jojoba oil, but that will go rancid after some time. There are also non-natural products like Ez Prez, which I have used actually, and I still like FCO better.
Sometime the shadows may look a tiny bit deeper in color when pressed, and I find they look closer to what they would look like applied wet. So they get intense and more metallic/shiny when pressed.
Another thing to keep in mind is the more shimmer the more pressing medium you need to hold it all together. So for matte shades, you need less, just a tiny bit, otherwise they will be too hard. Matte shades are the hardest to press in my opinion, because they have that tendency to get real hard, whereas pearly and shimmery shades don't get hard even if you overdo it on the fractionated coconut oil.
Let me know if you need any more advice, I have been pressing my makeup for years, I press everything, my shadows, my foundation, my blush. I have 3 full 28 pan palettes of pressed shadows plus 2 more that are 15 pan, so I have literally pressed over 100 shadows

[Oxana124]

zus - the way the ELF ones work is they have a metal on the bottom, so the pans(which they don't come with) will need a magnet stuck on them to work. I use aluminum pans, because they are cheap and don't rust, and I get thin adhesive magnetic sheets from AC Moore that I cut in little squares and stick on the bottom of the pans.

Cupcake - I buy palettes from eBay, they come with pans already. The 15 pan ones are like $3 or something, really cheap, I am pretty sure they will ship anywhere, it ships from Hong Kong.
They are not magnetic and you will need to magnetize them yourself, let me know if you need advice as to how to magnetize them.

[zus]

Oxana, great video, now you got me very interested in the fractionated coconut oil, I'd love to experiment with it. It opens up possibilities in pressing foundation as well, cool I don't mind using it loose at home but it would be very nice to have a compact version as well.

I do agree that the colours look deeper when pressed, as though they become more concentrated, and sometimes it makes some of them a bit similar-looking in the pans even though they actually have slightly different hues or finishes.

As for the palettes, if I ever order from ELF I'll give their palette a go (they charge something like 7 euros shipping and that always puts me off haha).