How To Make A Makeup Palette

How to Make Your Ain Custom Makeup Palette

If I've e'er practical your makeup, you will accept seen that I keep all of my pressed eyeshadows and blushes for your tone in a magnetic palette, that looks something similar this:

My Bright Spring makeup palette — My Brilliant Spring makeup palette

These palettes allow me to collect products that work for each tone together for easy apply, rather than having to open multiple compacts or pick out shadows from a palette which contains colours from multiple tones.

In this post I want to give y'all the information you need so you tin can create a custom makeup palette for yourself (though it needn't be as large equally mine, of course – it'southward specifically for you).

I'yard going to explain why I prefer them, how to choose (and where to buy) your palette and the products to put in it, and how to put it all together to create your perfect palette.

Pre-made palette vs customisable palette

The palettes that you're probable already familiar with are pre-made. The colours in them accept been chosen past the brand, and are almost always in pans that have been glued into the palette, so they can't exist removed or replaced. What y'all run across is what you go.

Pre-made eyeshadow palette (photo by ignatov) — Pre-made eyeshadow palette (photo past ignatov)

Custom palettes are those you lot create yourself by putting products in metal pans into a magnetic palette. The colours are up to you lot, every bit is the organization, and you can remove and replace them at will.

Custom makeup palette containing eyeshadows and blushes in Soft Autumn colours

Any pressed powder in a pan can be put into your palette. And so you might choose to create an eyeshadow palette, or a blush palette, or a combination, and yous tin can likewise go pans of bronzers, highlighters, powder foundations, setting powders and more. (You can besides buy cream products in pans, but mixing pulverization and foam products in the same palette is a recipe for disaster).

If you have all the powders y'all use together in one palette, it'due south not just a much more efficient utilize of space, it'll also be quicker and easier to exercise your makeup.

The principal reward of pre-made palettes is that they're cheaper, oft a lot cheaper. Even so that's only relevant if you're actually going to utilise all the products in the palette.

In my experience with eyeshadow palettes, there'll be one or ii colours that I use a lot, and the rest I utilise much less or hardly at all. Once those i or two get used upwards, the rest of the palette becomes useless to me, because you tin't supplant them. Information technology'due south wasteful, and not good value for money.

The other advantage often cited for pre-made palettes is that the choices are made for you. I find this a major disadvantage, since they're rarely made to harmonise with a specific tone, but I recognise that choosing colours tin can be overwhelming if you don't know what you're doing.

But if you've had a personal color analysis and know your tone, yous exercise know what you're doing.

You know the colours that will piece of work for you better than any makeup brand.

Where to buy makeup for your custom palette

Products sold in pans (rather than in compacts or in pre-made palettes) are bachelor from many brands. I've listed some below, simply this is by no means an exhaustive list.

The pans themselves can be circular, square or rectangular, and come up in a range of sizes. The most common are 26mm and 37mm round pans.

26mm

This is the standard eyeshadow pan size. These eyeshadows all come in 26mm pans:

Anastasia Beverly Hills

Australis

Coastal Scents

Colour Pop

Coloured Raine

MAC (won't stick to magnetic palettes)

Makeup Geek

Nyx

Rouge Bunny Rouge (matte / shimmer)

Sydney Grace

theBalm

37mm

This pan size is most often used for blushes, but besides sometimes for eyeshadows and face powders. Pans from different brands can vary a bit from 36–37mm, but all of these products will fit in a 37mm well:

Australis blushes, bronzers, contours and highlighters

Ben Nye matte and shimmer eyeshadows, blushes, and setting powders

Chantecaille eyeshadows

Littoral Scents blushes and bronzers

Graftobian eyeshadows and powder foundations

La Femme blushes and eyeshadows

Sugarpill eyeshadows

Yaby highlighters and bronzers, pulverization foundations and setting pulverisation

Other sizes

Colour Popular blushes, bronzers and highlighters (44mm round)

Inglot (rectangular, size varies by product)

MAC blushes (44mm circular; won't stick to magnetic palettes)

Makeup Forever eyeshadows and blushes, highlighters and contours (rectangular, size varies by product)

Makeup Geek blushes (44mm round)

Nabla eyeshadows (30mm round)

Yaby eyeshadows (15mm round) and blushes (30mm round)

Most of these products are in tin can pans, which volition stick to a magnetic palette perfectly.

However, MAC pans are aluminium (much cheaper than tin), which are not attracted to magnets. They get around this by sticking a magnet on the dorsum of each pan, and putting a ferrous metallic in the palette instead.

The upshot of this is that MAC pans stick to MAC palettes, everyone else's stick to magnetic palettes. You tin can even so use MAC pans in a magnetic palette, you lot but need to take the magnet off the lesser of the pan and replace it with a metallic sticker, which you tin buy from eBay or Amazon.

Conversely, to put anything other than MAC pans into a MAC palette, you lot will accept to stick magnets on the bottom of the pans, which you can also purchase from eBay or Amazon.

Magnetic palettes themselves are bachelor from many brands, in many sizes, and in freestyle and welled versions.

Freestyle magnetic palettes

A freestyle palette has no wells, and is simply an open space to put your pans (similar my Bright Spring palette at the top of this postal service).

Every bit a result, yous tin can fit pans of whatever size or shape into a freestyle palette, and more of them than into a welled palette of similar dimensions.

Nonetheless, they tend to go a little messier than a welled palette, and if y'all're putting pans right side by side to each other, you can become some cantankerous-contamination of colours.

Here are some of the many bachelor:

I've noted the number of standard eyeshadows (26mm circular pans) that will fit in each palette for easy comparison, but of form you tin can put pans in them of any size and shape.

Freestyle palettes are also bachelor in a range of sizes and styles from eBay and Amazon.

Welled magnetic palettes

Welled palettes have slots (wells) in them where you lot identify your makeup pans (like the Soft Autumn palette pictured before).

They have the advantage of keeping your makeup neatly organised, and also keeping the pans separated so cross-contagion of colours is less likely.

Yet, they practice limit yous on the size and shape of pans y'all tin continue in them.

The palettes listed below take wells for 26mm or 37mm round pans, and some have a combination of both.

In my own kit, almost every pressed powder I have is in a 26mm or 37mm pan, and those are the products I'll be recommending in my upcoming makeup kit posts for each tone, so they'll fit perfectly in these palettes.

26mm well palettes

37mm well palettes

26 & 37mm well palettes

For simplicity, I refer below to these ii sizes of pans equally "small" and "big", though of course smaller and larger pans exist.

Putting your palette together

You can, of course, buy any colours y'all like and put them together however your heart desires!

But for those of you lot who adopt a little guidance, here are a few suggestions:

a palette with a mirror can be helpful if you do makeup on the become
a palette with a clear lid is useful if you have multiple palettes, so you can see what's in each
cull a range of eyeshadow depths from light to nighttime (within the value range of your tone) if y'all want to create dimension or drama
similarly, choose some matte eyeshadows, since it's very difficult to create dimension with shimmer shadows alone
don't put lite colours right next to dark ones in your palette, if possible, as they can get contaminated and dingy
an eyeshadow in a taupe (grey-brown) from your tone is my favourite multitasker, great for shading the socket of the center, filling in the brows, and even contouring the face up
an eyeshadow in a nighttime colour from your tone can double as a liner

I promise this information helps yous in creating a makeup palette that is truly customised and perfect only for yous.

In the coming weeks I'll be posting articles about my makeup kit for each tone, along with suggested palettes and eyeshadow looks, to brand it even easier.

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