How I De-Potted My Milani Eye Shadows

So I recently posted a Drugstore Haul and a review on how much I love my ZPallettes! Well this post is the love child of the two posts! In my haul, I purchased five of the Milani Bella Eyes Gel Powder Shadows from my local CVS and since I did not spend too much on each shadow, thought it would be a fun experiment to try and de-pot them! I’ll go step-by-step on how I de-potted these shadows and let you know also what materials you will need to get started!

Materials:

• Milani Belle Eyes Gel Powder Eye Shadow
• Old set of tweezers
• Lighter
• ZPalette (or any palette of your chosing!)
• Magnets

Step 1:

• So what I found super helpful when I was doing this was to CONSTANTLY keep the shadow open like this. It sounds silly, but it will help when you are heating up the bottom pan of the shadow.

Step 2:

• So this is where the tweezers come into play, what you will want to do is find the little lip on the bottom of your shadow (where the hinge of the lid from the top half meets the bottom half) and stick your tweezer in there.
• What you want to do is WORK IT ALL THE WAY AROUND. It took me a few minutes to pop off the bottom lid on one shadow, whereas it took me seconds with a different shadow.
• What you are doing with your tweezers is loosening up the glue and once you can swing your tweezers around the bottom a few times, it should just pop off with no issue!

Step 3:

• This is where the heat comes into play! So I have been really working hard on trying to train my cat Belle to take photos but we have yet to master that skill…So sorry I couldn’t actually show you how BUTTTTT I feel like this photo can do it somewhat justice?
• If you do not like the smell of burning plastic, then depotting is not for you. In this step, you are heating up the glue to make it easier for the clay disc to come out of it’s little home.
• I took my lighter and held it on the bottom (the black side) for about 15 seconds, and then I would take my tweezers and push up on the eyeshadow trying to S L O W Y pry it out from the case. This is where patience is crucial. For this particular shadow, it took me two tries and I was able to pop it out no problem. I had another shadow that took roughly a minute to get it out.
• If you try to force the shadow out and the glue has not melted, YOUR SHADOW WILL CRACK. So just be gentle, we do not need to lose any shadows to the Makeup gods. #RIPBrokenMakeup

Step 4:

• Since I had five shadows to depot, and I was using heat, after I got the shadow out of the case I just set it aside and let it cool down. Gave it a little bit of a timeout.
• The shadow itself is sitting on a clay base so it does get hot and stay hot for a few minutes after.

Step 5:

• This is an extra palette I had in my makeup drawer and it came with magnetic stickers that I could just peel and stick onto whatever I needed.
• If you do not have a ZPalette but have an empty makeup palette, you can purchase magnetic strips and put those into your palette and just purchase the according stickers to put on the back of your products!
• Here are a few links to where you can purchase ZPalettes
  • ZPalette Website
  • Amazon
  • Beauty Bay
  • Makeup Geek 

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I hope you guys enjoyed this step-by-step break down on how to depot some of your eye shadows! Please do not hesitate to let me know what else you guys would like me to post about and don’t forget to follow me on Instagram!!!