To give a brief summary, people got into using magnetic palettes because individual eyeshadows or whatever make up item (in individual containers) have become too cumbersome to handle especially for travel– yeah imagine yourself bringing a train case just for your weekend trip to Bali… Ha ha ha ha ha.
Okay, exaggeration aside, sometimes cosmetics just occupy too much space and it’s unreasonable. The eyeshadow pot itself is probably just as big as a fat Haw Flake, and a foundation or powder pot is probably just as big as the priest’s ostia (did I spell that right???) in Sunday mass. But the space that the whole piece of cosmetic occupies is probably even bigger than what a bon bon occupies (for eyeshadow) or larger than what a Laughing Cow cheese wheel occupies (for powders and eyeshadow).
So that’s why magnetic palettes got into beauty circles. It may be hard work to de-pot, but it’ll definitely pay off in convenience and space! I’ll be talking about my palette in detail after the jump.
In my main photo, the palette on the left is the magnetic MyIPalette that Suesh sells here in the Philippines for 450, and the photo that you’re seeing on the right is the magnetic palette that mom and I built together for less than 50 pesos. So here’s the breakdown of what happened 🙂
We had previously bought little acrylic canisters from Quiapo. Each set of canisters came with an acrylic box, probably so that people can still keep the canisters organized after they’ve been filled with things… So this set, as shown in the price tag, is 40 pesos. We assume that the box alone is about 20 pesos.
Just to give an illustration this is how the box more or less looks like… But this is a larger box than what we had used.
And of course, no magnetic palette will be magnetic without its magnetic sheet. We got ours from National Bookstore during the warehouse sale. Even when there’s no sale the magnetic sheets are inexpensive, just always out of stock though. ^^; This sheet I’m showing is bond paper sized, but the one we used for our palette was the same size as a lengthwise intermediate pad paper, which we got for about 60 pesos. We used about half of the said sheet for the palette.
Since we weren’t into appearance so much (we cared more about functionality), I just used mounting tape to stick the magnetic sheet onto the acrylic box. The bottom looks like this. Yeah I know it’s butt ugly, no need to tell me.
And these are the photos I had shown previously. This is how our simple palette looks like.
This is basically how it looks like when opened (yeah even the palette needs its camwhore moments)
And now look at my Sonya eyeshadows (the collaboration of MAC with Forever Living products) all collected in one place! I no longer have to rummage through my make up kit every time and get confused with their identical containers because they’re all in one place now, baby! Organization FTW!
Just imagine how much space I saved by dissing all the pots! This is how the pots look like, they’re about an inch thick, while the eyeshadow pots alone are about just 1/4 inch thick. (photos not mine, from Sonya’s Website )
Oh yeah, mom and I were so pleased with the result of the first palette that we made a replica! I placed my blush shades and my brown and orange eyeshadows from Hong Kong.
Okay, imma be honest, the brown and orange eyeshadows are not magnetic– they’re just taped there with double sided tape…
Magnetic palettes are great but not all eyeshadow pots will stick to it, as some are made of aluminum. I also tried Shu Uemura products and they did not stick either. The solution is to either use double sided tape (just so that you can still keep them in one place alongside others), or you can also purchase metal stickers online.
I have yet to see someone sell these babies in the Philippines. For now, if you really want everything to be magnetic, it’s time to call your American amigas to get these for you.
And well, we have another spin off! Mom turned her old Estee Lauder powder compact into a magnetic palette as well using leftover magnetic sheet!
Yeah mom and I got that resourcefulness swag. Haters gon’ hate, mom gon’ save. *smug*
So by far the 60 peso magnetic sheet has now been used in 2 passport sized palettes and even this palette!
This palette may seem to be too small that using it for eyeshadows is inconvenient, but wait! There are far so many other things that stick to magnet aside from eyeshadows! So now her old palette has been turned into a trusty travel sized hairpin and safety pin organizer! It’s definitely a neat way to keep small metallic objects– and the best part is that they won’t spill onto the depths of your bag that easily. <3
Magnets are coolio!!! As for depotting, I think I might make a demonstration about that soon…
Good luck with your palettes!
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