DIY: customized and safe for travelling: mac palette

Todays post is a little different. Last year a friend asked me to show her how I made my mac pro palettes travel safe and I thought why not share here as well? I guess most of my readers use makeup themselves and maybe some of you will find this helpful.

I always liked palettes a lot more then all those little containers that fly around your room, get lost under beds, fall to the floor and break and so my very first eye shadow palette I made about 16 or 17 years ago (o.O I feel quite old) from an empty metal box of wax crayons that I glued the eyeshadows into. And I always loved how little space a palette needs compared to the same amount of eyeshadows in single containers, I can't stand an unorganized bath room, well unorganized ... I just never wanted to be one of those "girly girls" that have boxes over boxes of makeup and get lost inside them. I find if I can't see what I have I will not use it and what I won't use is wasted money.
Last year I, well you could say I fell in love with make up again, and I got a huge crush which ended in endless research on companies and beauty videos on youtube and shopping. I soon discovered mac cosmetics and their endless variety of eyeshadows. I just love what makeup can do for you, how it can alter your appearance with the tiniest modifications, how you can sculpt your face just by adding a highlight or a contour. It's just amazing! Anyhow I got a pro palette at my mac store and a few of their shadows. Online I also got a few empty pans that I re-pressed my beloved shadows that I owned before to make them fit the pro palette and to have a clean look of the whole palette itself. One thing I didn't like was that even if the whole palette felt pretty sturdy the eyeshadows themselves had a little space inside the palette to wiggle around while travelling or even when padding your brush into it. And wiggling sooner or later means breaking. So what does a crafter do? She does something about the situation and solutes the problem. ^__^ I bought foam rubber sheets (you know this rubber sheets we all used to work with as kids) and cut them to fit my shadows securely.

below I will show you exactly how I did this and even how I squeezed in more shadows than the original palette was intended for and still look very clean and "store-made". So, first I carefully popped out the inlay/divider of my mac palette (lifting the middle will make this work) and then I glued the metal sheet back into the palette so it won't fall out. Next I used the divider to draw a template onto the foam rubber sheets. I used 2 black foam rubber sheets with a height of 2mm each. I could have just copied the original divider one to one but since 18 shadows fitted so perfectly I made 18 shadow spaces instead of the original 15.

One of the rubber sheets I needed to fit a little more precise into the palette, since the divider was glued in and there was a sort of "socket" left, the pictures surely make clear what I mean. The second sheet I let as it was, it will become the top sheet.

Now I used the divider as a template again to draw on the places for the shadows. To better show I made a sketch on paper as well, but you can draw onto the rubber sheets directly and cut them out later.

In the next picture you can see I also made a blush palette and cut out the holes for the blushes. To cut I used small scissors so that I was able to slowly and carefully follow the drawn on outlines. The first rubber sheet to cut is the later top sheet.

Now I glued the cut layer to the layer that is still uncut and positioned them inside the palette. Let dry overnight. (I also tried to press the two layers but that resulted in an sort of distorted result which didn't fit the shadows/blushes properly anymore)

When the glue is dried I just cut to bottom rubber sheet as well.

the finished palette

I'm surprised to see that the summer palette from last year looks significantly different than this year.

and my blush palette as well

and of course you can not only make your palettes fit more eyeshadows or blushes you can also make it fit eyeshadows AND blushes or other companies products as well. I made a few paper sketches to show:

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this is basically all the makeup I need on an everyday basis and it will fit into a small makeup bag that sits in my bathroom, it takes like no space at all and give me lots of possibilities and creativity I could think of, plus when I'm traveling I still have everything with me and don't over-pack my bags with boxes of makeup. I hope you found this tutorial helpful ^__^