A few days ago, I was going through my palettes (which I don't use nearly often enough, except for the Too Faced Smokey one) and realized that one of them had a broken eyeshadow. It had been that way for some time, and had gotten pushed to the bottom of the palette stack despite it being a great little palette. I remembered seeing various people re-press broken pressed products, so I decided to give it a shot.
I started by gathering up all the little pieces of broken shadow that were floating around inside the palette and placed them back in the eyeshadow pan.
Next I used one of my metal spoons from TKB to scoop out all the eyeshadow and put it in a clean 3 gram jar I had on hand.
I decided it would probably be easiest to work with the pan not in the palette, so I removed the now empty eyeshadow pan. I simply placed it face down on my counter and heated up the back with a hair dryer until I was able to pry the pan out. I used a safety pin to pry it out. It was actually much easier than I expected.
Next I added some isopropyl alcohol to the powder, just adding a little bit at a time until I had a fairly uniform, thick paste. I initially tried to use my metal spoon to mix it, but then opted for a new cocktail stirring stick instead.
Then I transferred the paste to the pan, using my cocktail stirrer. I tried to squish it in the pan in a fairly uniform, flat way. I really enjoyed the squishing part of this project and probably spent more time than I needed to squishing the eyeshadow into the pan.
I let it sit and dry for a few hours until it seemed dry to the touch. I then placed a tissue on top of it and gently pressed the shadow with my fingers, continuing this until isopropyl alcohol no longer surfaced on the tissue.
I then let it dry overnight, and it seems to be good as new! I was surprised by how simple the process was, and quite pleased that I now know how to re-press my broken pressed powder products. I found it to be a fun process, and was almost a little disappointed that I didn't have anything else I needed to re-squish.
If you have any questions, let me know!
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