I’m well aware I’m quite often a moaning Minnie on my blog and I’m always going on about how I could have done something better and I’m sure it gets rather annoying. I hope this post goes someway to redeeming that because this time I’ve genuinely buggered something right up.
Earlier this week I was seized with a desire to make a palette of my brilliant yet under-used Sleek blushes. “Depot your Sleek blushes,” I said. “It’ll be fun,” I said. I did my research. I had some cash from a shoot, so I bought a Z-palette Pro. I looked at whether I could repress these particular blushes. I knew it would be a pain and I might crack the blushes a little round the edges, but stormed ahead anyway.
Don’t bother. Just... don’t.
When I depot MAC blushes, I simply pop out the insert, melt a hole in the remaining plastic which then in turn melts the glue and you can pop out the pan with an orange stick or the end of a brush. If it doesn’t give way straight away, you know you’ve not melted the glue and you melt another hole. I’ve never cracked a MAC blush and I’d read of a couple of bloggers cracking blushes using the alcohol method, so I thought, “I shall melt the Sleek blushes.”
DO YOU SEE A HOLE? I COULD NOT MELT A HOLE. IT WAS ON FIRE AND IT WOULD NOT MELT THROUGH. Although the heat melted the glue to the point I could prise the pan out easily, I was about to die from plastic fumes (and I had my kitchen extractor on!) so I had to stop. I’d heard of people heating plastic casing in pans over the stove, with flat irons or in the oven, but I didn’t see how that would work with the hefty plastic, plus I don’t have any kitchen utensils I’m willing to sacrifice for a blush that cost less than a fiver, let alone get combine my clumsiness, melting plastic and my GHDs. I also still managed to crack this first blush. Time to switch to the alcohol method, then! If you’re not down with the kids when it comes to depotting, you can drop rubbing alcohol down the gap between the pan and the casing which dissolves the glue, allowing you to pry the pan out.
Insert a knife into the gap and let the alcohol drip underneath the metal pan. Do this all the way around, give the pan a little tip to make sure the alcohol has spread everywhere and give it a few seconds to do it’s thing. Run your knife carefully around the edge if you can and if all goes well, you can feel that the pan is ready to “move.” Then simply whip your knife underneath and prise the pan out. Easy, right?
NON.
I had SO much trouble doing this. These pans are stuck down with some kind of bloody glue that mere mortals were not meant to cope with, and worse, the pans are very long, so it’s nigh on impossible to get the blushes out without bending the pan and cracking the blush. Once the pan is bent, you can’t really un-bend it! I really don’t know what I could have done with this. The pink blush, Flamingo, was the first one I did as it’s the most dupable Sleek shade I had. Luckily it’s not cracked all the way to the bottom, so that’s fine. The one above, Aruba, I was actually very careful with as it’s such an unusual blush. I could feel it moving in the plastic case when I moved the knife as if the glue had dissolved, and yet it just exploded everywhere! Sad times, although I think I’ve saved it!
I had nine blushes to depot – the perfect amount to fit the palette – but I couldn’t bring myself to damage my favourite, Suede, so I only did eight. I managed two of eight with no cracks whatsoever (Rose Gold and Scandalous, you beauties!), two were badly smashed or cracked as above and the other four had tiny cracks in the edges. What a nightmare!
If all does go well, however, you’ll be rewarded with this:
As you can see, poor Mr Pan Tao is looking a little damp, but he will dry out eventually and be good as new. Then you can pop his sticker and a little magnet on and he can go and join his poor, battered friends:
I’m not faulting Sleek at all for the way this panned (hey!) out – their packaging is both lovely looking and very sturdy and it’s not their problem I want to depot them. In an ideal world, yes, they’d recognise that poor young makeup artists will buy the only good high street range for darker skintones and use it in their kit and put it in more expensive packaging and keep them the same price and and and, but hey ho ;)
If you were thinking of doing this – don’t. If you must do it with long rectangluar blushes, try your Sleek first and not your Nars! I hope this helped someone!
