How to: Depot Cardboard Palettes. Too Faced and Urban Decay Book of Shadows IV

It's been a while, I know. I apologize. I was taking Summer classes and have since started Fall classes and thus have been super busy! 

Today, I wanted to show you guys how to "de-pot" eye shadows from a cardboard type box palette, such as Urban Decay Book of Shadows IV and the Too Faced small eye palettes or something similar. 

What you need:

• Knife, I used a cheap crappy one I had lying around
• A place to store they eyeshadow, some type of magnetic or metal palette. A few examples are: Unii, anothersoul on etsy, or you can make your own! I ended up finding the perfect tin at a thrift store, mod podging some textured paper on the top, and using that.
• Scissors, I used these for cutting through various scraps of cardboard
• Rubbing alcohol and q-tips, used for removing the glue on the back of the pans
• Superglue and magnetic strip tape, depending on what type of palette you decide on, these will be used to secure the shadows to the palette. 
• Eye shadow Palettes to de-pot!

This is my empty palette:

I was lucky enough to find a tin that was super thin. It was originally used

 to store labels of some sort.

I decided to start with a cheap copycat palette I got from Rue 21. This palette set me back about $7.00 so I figured if I ruined it (my first time depotting this type of palette), it was no big deal.

Here is the palette

As you can see, it's a bit of a knockoff palette of the Too Faced 

eye shadow palettes.

I first started by inserting my knife into the side to pop out the cardboard that holds the shadows.

The cardboard popped right out and I was left with this:

I took off the layers of cardboard until I was left with just one layer left, the one that held the eye shadows.

From here, it was pretty easy to just peel the cardboard backing away from the face. The longer shadows on the left side of the palette popped right out. The smaller ones were left glued to the cardboard.

From here, I just twisted the pans and they popped right off! The glue was not very strong on this palette but I'm not surprised.

The next step is to clean off the back of the pan.These ones didn't have much glue residue so I just wiped off the eye shadow dust with a cotton round. Again, depending on what type of palette you choose to store the shadows in, you will need to add magnets to the back. I use magnetic tape like this:

I got mine at Michael's but any craft store should have some.

Next, just add a tiny drop of super glue to the back of the magnetic tape. I found that the tape itself is not very strong so super glue works to keep the magnet on the pan.

The finished product:

Still have room for Urban Decay Book of Shadows IV.

The process is similar to above.

The packaging.

The eye shadows are in a drawer in the palette so you just have to pull the drawer out.

The picture I took of the next step didn't turn out but on the back there's a flap where they closed the whole thing up. I cut along the seal with a knife and peeled up the sides.

Peeled the back off:

Lifted the face off the shadows:

From here, I had to pry the pans off with my knife and bending the cardboard slightly.

The glue on these was really strong but when you pry off the pan, the glue will either stick to the pan or to the cardboard so the more you can get to stick to the cardboard, the better. Especially since the glue is pretty difficult to remove even with the rubbing alcohol. Acetone will also get the job done but rubbing alcohol is what I had on hand!

Voila!!! All done and my eye shadows are much more portable now! I hated to ruin the UD palette but it was so bulky and I use some of the shades daily so it was such a pain to have to pull out that big honking thing every day.

Hope this helps you guys with all you de-potting ventures!!

Til next time,

B