How To De-Pot Your MAC Eye Shadows

After my haul from MAC, I decided to transfer all of my MAC eye shadows to the palettes I bought.  Let me just say that this was no easy feat!  This was my first time de-potting and I found that it was very difficult to do.  At one point in the process, I turned my hand really red trying to cut through the plastic.  As difficult as it was, though, eventually I got used to de-potting after 18 eye shadows!  Below I will show you the tips and tricks I learned to make this process a little easier.

In order to de-pot your eye shadows, you will need:

1.  Your Eye Shadow

2.  Magnet Stickers (Michael's sells these in squares)

3.  A Small Plastic Dish

4.  Rubbing Alcohol (91%)

5.  A Small Knife (I'm using a mini Swiss Army Knife from my sister)

6.  A Pair of Wire Cutters (Ideally VERY sharp)

7.  3/4" Round Labels with the Eye Shadow Names Printed Out (I used Avery's 05408 Labels)

8.  A Paper Towel

All of these components are displayed below.

To start, open your eye shadow case.  Take your small knife and stick the tip of it into the groove that separates the top and bottom.  If you are having trouble locating the groove, here is a picture below where I have stuck the tip of my knife into it.

Wiggle your knife until you hear a pop.  This pop means that the top has separated from the bottom.  Take the top part off, and keep the bottom part in a bag somewhere, because you will be able to turn in six of these for a free lipstick at any MAC counter.  The empty bottom part will look like the picture below.

Next, take a look at the top part that you were able to separate from the bottom.  There are two indentations on the sides of the black plastic piece.  Use your wire cutters and make a cut on each side of the wider indentation.  In the picture below, I am making the second cut into the wider indentation with my wire cutters.

Then use your wire cutters again to try and pry the lip of the wider indentation away from the metal pan.  BE CAREFUL.  For me, this was the hardest on my hands and my patience.  After much difficulty, I was finally able to expose the separation between the metal pan and the black plastic piece, as shown below.

Next, take your alcohol and pour some into your plastic dish.  Use your small knife and scoop some of the alcohol onto the tip.  Slightly wedge the tip of your small knife between the metal pan and the black plastic piece, and keep adding several more drops of alcohol with your knife.  Wait a few seconds for the alcohol to do its work.  Then wedge your knife deeper into the separation between the metal pan and the black plastic piece, as shown below.

Again, wiggle your knife until the metal pan completely separates from the black plastic piece.  Keep the metal pan and throw away the black plastic piece.

At this point, you will notice that there is a bunch of leftover glue stuck to the bottom of the metal pan.  Take the paper towel and dip it into the alcohol.  Rub off the rest of the glue from the metal pan with this paper towel.  At the end, the bottom of the metal pan should be squeaky clean, as shown below.

Then take a piece of magnet sticker and cut out a circle.  Stick the circle onto the back of the metal pan.  If you can find magnet stickers that are already in the shape of a circle, this would be really helpful.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get my hands on these, so I cut out a retarded circle, as shown below. 

You're almost done, peel the corresponding label off and affix it on top of the magnet sticker, as shown below.

Lastly, place your metal pan into your palette, and you should be finished de-potting this eye shadow!

If you need to take a closer look at the steps, you can click on any of the pictures above and you will be able to view them with greater clarity.  I have watched many videos on this subject, but they did not show me the steps with very much detail, so this made it very difficult for me to figure it all out by myself.  I know the lighting was bad, but I hope these pictures will help you see exactly what I am talking about.

And FYI, MAC sells eye shadows in the form of palette refills, so you can skip this whole process.  I simply chose the regular eye shadows for the sake of this tutorial.  If you have any questions or comments on this subject, I'm here.

Love,

Geneys  :o)