Z Palette, and fixing a broken eyeshadow!

I've been aware of Z Palettes before, but never really wanted one as I hadn't depotted anything. This changed after I received a couple of gift sets for Christmas, both of which were in extremely bulky packaging. So when I decided which bits I wanted to save and take out of the ridiculous chunky boxes, I ordered my palette in the small leopard print. This one measures 3.8"L x 3.8"W x .44"D, and the large one is 8"L x 4.75"W x .44" D. They come in Black, Pink, Zebra, and Leopard. If I ever need a large one, I might go for pink or zebra to mix it up a bit!

The Z Palettes are magnetic and come with tiny magnet stickers that you affix to your depotted pans. The round pans that I had (two blushes) were just the right size - about the standard size of a MAC eyeshadow. I have absolutely no recollection of what brand they were, all I remember is that they were in one of those massive gift boxes made to look like a magazine cover. I think it was called 'Colour Collection' - my bestie got it for me. The blush and bronzer pictured here are actually really nice, so I saved those and a few baked eyeshadows from set and tossed the box along with all the other bits I wouldn't use. The metal in the pans wasn't strong enough to stick to the palette on its own so I used the stickers.

I also had four small rectangular pans from another gift set that had unnecessarily bulky packaging. These eyeshadows were part of Fearne Cotton's Christmas range for Boots - which I love! I've had quite a lot of Fearne stuff over the past two Christmases, including brushes, lipglosses, loose powder eyeshadows, lipstick sets, eyeliner and so on. I'm a fan of Fearne's style anyway and I love every colourway that her ranges produce. Unfortunately as I was easing these fiddly and akward pans from their cardboard packaging, this dark purple shade broke - boooooo!

I did some research on how to fix a broken shadow, I'd seen instructions before but I needed to refresh my memory, so I googled it and watched a few youtube vids. Here's what I did...


I used the wrong end of an Estee Lauder lip brush because it was flat, and crushed the shadow up into a finer powder.

I added a few drops of Strictly Professional surgical spirit, which I bought here for £3.27 on Amazon - not bad for half a litre! I can also use it to sterilize my tools like tweezers etc. I use the Strictly Professional cosmetic brush cleaner to deep clean my make up brushes, which is pretty good.

Whoops - my clumsiness demonstrated for all to see! It looks really metallic here, but in reality is actually more matte. I usually use this in my crease when doing a smoky purple look.

I wasn't too fussed about losing a bit of shadow - I just wanted a solid block again so I wouldn't have to bin it! I used some tissue wrapped around the end of an unused toe separator to press down. With MAC eyeshadows it is recommended that you use a coin, but as my pan was an odd shape, this was the only thing I could find that was the appropriate size to compact the wet shadow with. I then left it overnight to dry out.

This is what it looked like when dry - managed to stick my nail in it, d'oh! I actually think that the colour payoff is better now - it seems like this little fixing trick has actually improved the formula and made it swatch more pigmented, which is a plus for me, as before it was hard to pick up a decent amount easily with my brush, to the point where it applied a little patchy - you know when a bad shadow looks a bit dirty? It doesn't look perfect, but it's usable, which is what I was aiming for! :)

Anyway, I'm really pleased that I bothered to rescue it, and it's now sat neatly in my Z-palette with my other depotted pans.

Has anyone else got any good tips for rescuing make-up?

Sticky Kisses!

xxx