The Right Way to Depot Your Eyeshadows

If you’ve ever lurked on the Makeup Addiction subreddit, you know that depotting shadows is a daily topic of discussion. Whether users are swapping tips, showing off their custom palettes or lamenting over a broken shadow, it’s clear that if you haven’t depotted your shadows yet, it might be a good time to start. You might be wondering why beauty junkies go to the trouble in the first place — but the benefits are endless. For starters, you save tons of space when you condense all those single shadows into one, portable palette. This is a great option for the makeup minimalist or someone who doesn’t have tons of space to spare. It’s also a great way to keep all your fave shadows in one place. It can be a hassle to tote multiple Naked palettes around after all. The best part? It’s super simple to do. All you need is a magnetic palette, a butter knife, rubbing alcohol and lots of patience. But be warned: Once you start, you just might be obsessed.

Some shadows lend themselves to depotting better than others, but a few simple steps should help you depot even your toughest shades. The easiest palettes to depot are those with cardboard backs or those with small gaps between the pan and the palette (most shadows come like this). See depotting in action, ahead:

You’ll Need:

A butter knife

Rubbing alcohol

A magnetic palette

A dropper

Step 1: Fill your dropper with rubbing alcohol and place a few drops on the corner of the shadows — the goal is for the alcohol to make it in between the gaps of the pan to the glue. The alcohol loosens the glue from the shadow.

Step 2: Find the gaps in the pan and use your butter knife to gently separate the pan from the plastic.

Step 3: Transfer the depotted eyeshadow to the magnetic palette

Repeat steps 1-3 until you’ve depotted as many shadows as you’d like.

Will you be trying this method? Let us know in the comments below!