little white truths

This 'Tini Beauty Eyeshadow in Pearl Fizz is a fantastic product that makes a great face highlighter as well as an eyeshadow, and I do have two of these so if you've seen it before, that's because I have a second on my Project Pan list.

Since I wanted to include a bronzer, contour powder and highlighter in my Z-palette, I decided this would be my highlighter because it's a great multipurpose product and the pan itself is big enough for a larger brush.

I thought I'd go for the dental floss depotting method with this because there was a gap between the packaging and pan that was big enough to squeeze the floss into with very little effort. 

While I did manage to pull each end of floss down to the next corner, unfortunately no amount of tugging would get the floss through the glue beneath the pan, so I went back to the drawing board and tried another way:

You may have seen a lot of people do this: you take a hair straightener and some baking paper, then leave the shadow on the hot straightener so that the glue melts. I have a feeling this wouldn't work with all products because the packaging doesn't always get hot enough (which is why some people resort to using a lighter, which I wasn't game to do on a smaller pan for safety reasons), and indeed it didn't work here.

So I had to go back to my trusty oven method. I talk about that one in my first depotting post.

Next up was my Stila Sun Bronzer in Dark. This is one of my all-time favourite bronzers (indeed, I think it's my favourite matte one), but unfortunately it's been discontinued and I've had some trouble finding something else that's matte and has a good red undertone like this does.

I was a little reluctant to risk damaging it, but in the end I decided to bite the bullet because I've never loved the bulky packaging and it's also my oldest, least-expensive bronzer - so it was the only one I was prepared to risk.

I'd really hoped that the floss method would work here because it clearly wasn't a candidate for the hair straightener (the packaging is way too thick), and I didn't want to bake it in the oven unless I absolutely had to. Plus I'd heard that bigger pans tend to have less glue on a ratio to pan size (as compared to smaller eyeshadows), so I'd thought it would be an easier job.

I was wrong. This went in the oven too.

Next up, my two Mememe Blushes in Coral and Pink. These are easily my least-used blushes because I have so many other cheek products that I prefer, but I figured I might as well take them apart for the practice and also because putting them in my Z-palette might inspire me to start using them a bit more. 

Failing that, I could always scrape them out and use the empty pans for some loose powders I'd like to press (watch this space: I'll be attempting that for the first time in a later post).

While you'd think these would be the easiest of the lot due to the cardboard packaging and foam insert they're stuck to, unfortunately the coral one cracked a bit - even though I was super gentle. Annoying because the coral one is the one I'm more likely to keep (I just don't wear pink on my cheeks - it doesn't suit me), although I was able to fix it with rubbing alcohol, which I'll go through in another post.

It's starting to look pretty good - yay! I'm still working out whether I'll keep everything in there because I did start with 'practice' products that aren't my favourite (except for the highlighter and bronzer, which I love), but at least I'm learning a few lessons each time I do this.

As I said in my first post, the key here is patience: if you try to rush through the process, you'll wind up with cracked powders. Those top three powders all have cracks, and they cracked because I tried too hard to prise them from their containers before the glue was loosened enough. So be careful of making that mistake!

In my next post I'll go through my experience with fixing cracked powders by using rubbing alcohol, and after that I may well have a go at pressing loose powders into empty pans. Fun times!

Let me know if you've ever depotted anything and what you've learned in the process : )