Creative Idea: Depotting Eyeshadows & Another Magnetic Palette

WARNING: Picture Heavy

I've done some depotting before and some of it wasn't very pretty. I basically used the alcohol method of trying to loosen the glue but sometimes it didn't work well. Heat seemed like the best method but I was trying at all costs to avoid depotting using a candle because I felt that it was just too dangerous. I thought about trying using a flat iron but I had read that it wasn't as effective and I didn't like the thought of possibly ruining my flat iron plates. After much thought I got the idea to use my heat gun that I use for doing embossing in rubber stamping crafts. It has worked out well for me and I had a couple of people ask me how I do it.

Supplies needed:
   Palette
   Heat Gun
   Pointed Item to Push the Pan--A pen works well

For this tutorial, I am going to depot a Wet N Wild palette.

This is my heat gun. There are various brands out there with various prices but are priced around $29.99. You can usually find these in a craft store.

First you need to remove the stickers that are around the palette. The front has a short sticker tab that has the color of the palette. I usually like to keep this on the side. The back is fully covered with a sticker which has application instructions.

Often these stickers pull of cleanly and easily but if it feels like it is really stuck well, I usually blast it for a short period with the heat gun  and the sticker will pull off easily.

I think that it is best to remove the sticker because the heat of the heat gun is quite hot and it is possible that it might get hot enough to ignite.

We will remove a pan at a time, concentrating the heat gun's air flow on the area where that one pan is. It is best to work in a well-ventilated area because the plastic will melt a bit and there are some fumes that are emitted.

Continue to have the heat gun heat that area until you can see the plastic start to melt. It'll look like it has condensation forming on the plastic. It should take only a couple of minutes. You don't want to have the plastic melt, only soften.

At this point, you can turn off the heat gun and using your desired instrument, poke that area and see if it has softened enough for you to be able to push the plastic forward. If it is still not soft enough, apply more heat using the heat gun for about another minute.

Your pan should pop out of the case and you can either have it softly drop upside down onto a soft towel or you can carefully grab the lifted pan and place it aside. Be sure to protect your fingers because the pan will be hot.

Here you can see that I was able to push the pan out but my pen did not make an actual hole in the plastic.

Using the heat gun again, follow the same steps to remove the rest of the pans. Using this heat gun method ensured that my eyeshadow pans stayed perfectly intact. I haven't had any cracked or crumbled shadows and haven't nicked or put a gouge mark in it.

Note: While apply the heat with the heat gun, make sure to keep your fingers well away from the heat. It is best to hold the cover while the bottom corner of the case is on your towel-covered surface.

Now that you have removed the pans from the palette, you can cover the bottom of each pan with a magnetic strip after it has cooled and place it into a magnetic palette of your choice. Thus my segue to the 2nd part of this Creative Idea post.

Some time last year I had seen a few posts about turning a DVD case into a magnetic palette. I thought that it was a great idea and recently started working on that project. At first it was a bit frustrating because it wasn't quite as easy as it looked and because I tend to be a perfectionist when I create something that I had to have it nearly perfect according to my standards. Once I got the hang of how I wanted it to be, I went a bit crazy and a few bloggers were (un)lucky recipients of this palette.

I used a DVD case, made a nice cover for it by printing out a picture but you can use any nice printed paper as well.

I also added a picture to the inside cover where I had to cut out the portion where you would normally snap in the dvd. I cut a magnetic sheet to fit inside the case and put my depotted shadows in it.

This magnetic palette happens to be filled with all Wet N Wild eyeshadows. In between the two tabs, there is enough space to put a magnetic strip which will fit the last palette that I depotted.

I then place the small sticker tab that has the palette's name in an open area near the depotted pans.

As you can see in the pictures, I also place decorative magnetic strips which mark off each palette. That's just something that I decided I wanted to do. I don't think that I will be doing it with all of the palettes I depot. In the last picture if you look closely, just above and just below the palette that I just put in, I also added the applicators that came with the Wet N Wild palette. I did it just to show that it will fit in there. I normally don't use the included applicators so they will not stay in my palette.

If you've managed to read this up to this point, thank you! It is a long post. I hope that you found it interesting and helpful.