In my last post I was experimenting with finally pressing my loose indie pigment minis into eyeshadows and after a few attempts managed to get down a workable formula.

With that thought in mind I attacked the rest of my stash! 

I went from this pile of jars to one neat and tidy eyeshadow palette that's just perfect for travel and will actually get used!

The choice to make my own palette instead of buying another free form one such as the large Z palette I already have, is the damn postage! No matter where I looked, the postage was as much, if not more than the palette itself!

Pffft to that.

Instead I thought I might stretch my crafty creative muscles and make something nifty that a) would be awesome and b) I could photograph the creation process of and convert into a tutorial for you guys!

Step 1: Choosing A Palette Item

Depending on your preference and what/how many pans you want to have in your palette will determine what kind of container you will need to use. Be creative!! Just because it's a makeup palette doesn't mean it needs to look like one or even have the same dimensions! Some things like mint tins, pencil tins with an inside tray that could store your brushes and shadows, paint boxes, old jewellery boxes, cd/dvd cases, the skies the limit.

Personally I wanted something slim but could still fit a large amount of shadows in it. I worked it out to two choices - an adorable cd gift box I had lying around (from Borders/Paperchase I think?) and a metal CD tin (which I've used before to make a blush palette).

I know this palette doesn't have a clear lid but this wasn't an issue for me. You could use a container that has a window/clear lid instead or even cut a window into a cardboard box lid and then glue a piece of clear overhead projector film to it.

Step 2: Creating Your Palette Design/Layout

Before creating the palette I took some time to figure out what type of design/layout I would like to have. As I was creating this palette with all new pressed pigments and not preexisting shadows/blushes/powders etc, I had some freedom in designing a cool pattern. If you would like to create a palette with no layout/a free form palette you can skip to the next step.

Firstly I had to figure out what shape I wanted to use vs. how many pans I could fit inside. Below you can see the various designs I tried.

26mm Circle pans only: 5 rows of 5 = 25 total pans

26mm Square pans only: 4 rows of 5 = total of 20 pans

Small Rectangle pans only: 4 rows of 11, plus 1 row of 5 = totlal of 49 pans

After all this I worked out that while I liked the circle pans the most, my mini Fyrinnae samples would be too small to fill the whole pan and some would look really "shallow" which I didn't like. Also, I didn't have quite enough pans to fil the whole palette (only needed 2 more dammit!).

The small rectangle pans would by comparison look really full, but I didn't like how messy they looked in filling the whole palette.

Lastly the square pans left heaps of empty space on the bottom row making the palette look half full.

So I decided to create a design using all three shapes to try and get the best world of each :)

However now how the hell was I going to put the magnet base in lol? Easy! Just pop the lid on, flip the palette over and take the base off, leaving all the pans in the lid upside down and ready to be flipped back on the base once it's been magnetized!

Step 3: Making the Palette Magnetic

The materials I used to convert this CD case are:

The process is pretty straight forward, simply trace around the base of your item onto the magnetic sheet backing paper, then cut approx 2mm inside that line - this allowance will mean the sheet will fit inside your palette.

If it doesn't fit just trim it down so it does! :)

As my newly converted palette was once a gift box, the lid wasn't hinged to the base making it a bit tricky to open and close repeatedly. To solve this all you need to do is add a ribbon tab.

Materials I used:

Just cut the ribbon to approx 5cm length, arrow the end and then use the lighter (carefully) to melt the edges which will prevent fraying. Place it near a corner and use your choice of adhesive weaponry to attached it to the inside lid. Tada!

And that's it for making your custom palette! In part 2 I'll go over my pressing method quickly, the end results and some swatch photos. :)