Depotting My Palettes

Way back when, in the early days of beauty YouTube and blogging, I used to see so many people putting together their own Mac, Inglot and Makeup Geek palettes. Stacks of Z-palettes in Ikea Alex drawer units seemed to be the norm. I’d also see brave souls attempt to depot eyeshadows that weren’t meant to be modular, sometimes damaging them in the process. I was intrigued, but never quite brave enough to do it myself. 

Most people will be familiar with the feeling of having a closet full of clothes and nothing to wear. Well, for me I felt that with makeup – specifically eyeshadow. So, one day, I decided to do a proper inventory, arm myself with a hair dryer and some computer repair tools, re-watch a bunch of how-to videos, and do some eyeshadow demolition. I mean, depotting. 

I had two larger palettes – a Shu Uemura and an Urban Decay one, both gifts from dear friends, some single eyeshadows and smaller 2-5 shadow palettes. What bothers me about palettes in general is that you end up using some colours more than others. These get used up faster and you end up with random empty pans. Also, you think you have variety, but in fact you only like one colour and you have to force yourself to come up with ways to use the other ones.

The idea of condensing my existing shadows into a set of “looks” that I could actually focus on wearing, had been gaining momentum for a while. I felt like I was still looking for the perfect pink champagne, taupe and purple eyeshadows whenever I’d be browsing at beauty counters, and while it’s true and the search continues, I wanted to try and avoid buying more things I didn’t like. As I was doing the inventory, it turned out I have quite a few purple eyeshadows, and even though they’re not perfect, I thought I should try and make them work before buying new ones. 

In addition to feeling sentimental about some of the palettes, I felt quite guilty about possibly breaking some expensive items like the ones by Guerlain, Dior, Chanel… and definitely breaking the beautiful packaging. Because I had had these for a long time and some of these were semi-used up, I made peace with the idea of potentially damaging the eyeshadows in the process. 

The catalyst for this endeavor was discovering the Make Up For Ever Refillable Cases. When I saw them a few years ago, all of the sizes cost less than 2€. I had to do a double take, multiple times. I couldn’t believe these palettes were so cheap, so I bought a few, and then a few more in various sizes. Just recently I was tempted to get more and saw that these had gone way up in price – around 6€. I still think it’s a fair price for the L and XL palettes, not so much for the smaller ones. If I didn’t have mine today, I’d still get them, but I would be more intentional about getting the ones I need and not just a random amount to play with.

As for the depotting itself – the process was quite intense and fun. The hair dryer wasn’t very effective, instead I used a frying pan on my stove on very low heat and a paper towel between the surface of the pan and a given palette. I used all kinds of tools to try and loosen the pans up so I could remove them – toothpicks, razors, forks… Some shadows came more willingly than others. Some were magnetic and easy to play around with in the new palettes. Others were not and I ended up using double sided tape to secure them, which is both not terribly strong but super annoying to remove if you change your mind. 

I did this over many days. The two palettes I left alone (for now) were the Urban Decay Naked Ultimate Basics and YSL’s 03 Afrique. I really like the Tetris aspect of it! Arranging and re-arranging the pans for the best possible fit, because most of the shadows are some weird shape that doesn’t distribute perfectly in any of the palettes. I also like putting together a “look” and sticking to it for a while. This has helped me have a better overview of what I have and to actually use products up. I’m seeing which colours I really like to use, which are just nice to use occasionally and which ones I seem to be avoiding. 

Depotting my palettes, while risky, was a great way to re-evaluate my preferences in makeup application and to have a vision for what I want in my curated collection going forward. In the future, I want to stick to brands that sell individual, modular products that I can pick and choose myself and replace when necessary. So far, Inglot seems to have the best value and variety, although it is complicated to get where I live. I may reserve shopping there for when I travel to cities that have an actual Inglot store. How many purple eyeshadows is too many? What is the perfect taupe?? This remains to be seen, but hopefully I’ll find them and have fun with creating my own little palettes along the way.

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