Depotting is removing a cosmetic product, such as eyeshadow, blush or lipstick, from its original container and placing it into more practical packaging. Practical, meaning you save tons of space when you condense all those single shadows into one, portable palette. Check out me depotting my products here.

Why Depot Makeup?

Most professional makeup artists find themselves carrying around a heavy makeup kit from set to set, Upstairs, etc. And in whatever makeup gig you take. Depotting makeup pans out of their bulky packaging and into one palette eases the process and keeps things less messy, without multiple palettes lying around.

Customizing

As a professional artist, I get to customize my products for all skin tones, types. Colors in their warm to cool spectrums into specific palettes that make sense to how my brain organizes things. This makes the makeup process; faster, and the clean-up; faster and less cluttered. And most importantly saves you a ton of space! frustration, and surprisingly a lot of time.

Cut Time Getting Ready

Also, want to add you don't need to be a professional makeup artist to benefit from depotting. Who wouldn't love a clean space on their counters, especially cutting time getting ready in the morning? I definitely wouldn’t mind that!

Save Money

Using custom magnetic palettes can also save you money purchasing refills instead of the standard product.

Example: "There is a $3 differential between the MAC eyeshadow and the MAC eyeshadow refill. And purchasing it multiple times a year begins to add up.

Use with caution

However, depotting may depend on the brand. Some pans will pop right out of their packaging, while others are attached by glue etc, and you have to use a more careful approach. In my experience, some brands like Morphe, and Laura Mercier actually glue their pans onto their palette. I broke almost all my eyeshadow colors in this process. So I’d be VERY careful and research what brands are safe to attempt to depot their pans.

How to depot eyeshadow

Make sure you heat the base of the palette until it is quite hot - the palette needs to be well-heated for the glue to unstick. (You’d typically use a hair straightener)

Proper tool to depot. Use a thin, flexible metal spatula. This will be your best friend. It will let you get in between the pan and the plastic packaging so you can carefully wiggle the pan out.
Be patient and don’t rush. This can break your eyeshadow or alter its quality. And you should never use dirty hands, tools or spatulas to depot.
Practice on some shadows that you don't like first because I can pretty much guarantee that you may just mess the first few ones up.
Rip away if you can take the palette apart before you start to depot, it will make things a lot easier. Especially if it's cardboard you can rip away at.

*Condensed into an essential easy access kits!*

Pro Tips:

Be aware that cosmetics have a limited shelf life.
When you disrupt them, you are exposing them to non-tested conditions and foreign packaging that could possibly alter their performance or quality, or cleanliness. (use sanitized tools and clean hands or gloves)
Do invest in high-quality palettes and the tools to protect your depotted product.

Products I use:

Coosei Magnetic Magnetic Eyeshadow Palette #ad is made of acrylic and has easy magnetic access that is also transparent. The quality of this product is wonderfully exceptional. I’ve been through a few cases and this one takes the win. I love how it feels expensive and durable. And how it will also protect and keep my products clean.

Metal Stickers for Makeup Pans and Spatula #ad This comes with more than enough metal stickers that stick to your pans and you can easily customize adjust, or move into another magnetic palette or so. This is my favorite part of this palette is that there are no inserts, just a magnetic backing you can put literally anywhere in your palette. And as a bonus, it comes with a spatula to remove pans from your old palette!

Empty Lipstick Tray Case #ad Great for any cream products!

What Is Depotting Makeup?