Fashion

I Made A DIY Lipstick Palette & Here's How

by Emma Matthews

We’ve all been there, hurling through drawers and drawers of rubbish attempting to find our favorite lipsticks. If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably be amazed at how many you find during the hunt to re-organize your makeup drawer. Reds; Nudes; Pinks, there’re all there except for the one you actually want. That’s why I’ve been on a mission to re-organize my makeup drawer and create a DIY lipstick palette.

The idea came to me after watching @Mazarin_Design’s Instagram video. In the clip, she shows you how you can easily melt down lipsticks and store them in empty casing. As I had a spare palette lying around the house from a previous tutorial, I decided to give it a go and see whether it’s really as simple as it looks. Spoiler alert: It is.

Though I was skeptical about melting down my lipsticks, the results were fantastic. Adding heat didn’t ruin the pigmentation of the formula and the products were just as bright as before. Not to mention, that I can now access them straight away, as my new palettes are stacked in a drawer as opposed to being pushed at the back, crumbled up against an old blusher I don’t use.

Want to get organized and create your very own lipstick palette? Here’s what you have to do.

What You’ll Need

Empty Eyeshadow Makeup Palette, $2.99, Amazon

For this DIY, you'll need the following ingredients:

1. Cut The Lipstick

First you need to remove the lipstick from it’s casing. I found the easiest way to do this was by cutting it with a knife. Simply slice through the lipstick then pull the plastic tube away.

2. Place It On A Spoon

Next, pile the product onto a large spoon. I used a tablespoon, but you can also use a soupspoon or mini-ladle. Just make sure the surface area is big enough to hold all of the lipstick as it melts down.

After all, you don’t want that precious MAC buy to be splashing all over your countertops.

3. Light A Flame

To melt your lipstick down, you’re going to need an open flame. I used a tealight candle. You can also use portable heaters and/or an open flame on a gas oven. Just watch those fingers!

4. Hold Spoon Over Flame

Now, it’s time to start melting the lipstick. Hold the spoon over the flame and reminisce over the days you spent slaving away at a Bunsen burner in school science labs.

5. Keep Moving The Spoon

As you hold the spoon over the flame, keep moving it from side to side. If you don’t the lipstick will begin to boil. Though this doesn’t necessarily affect the texture or pigment of the product in the long run, it does make it trickier to pour it into the palette smoothly. So save yourself the difficulty!

6. Pour Into Palette

Once your lipstick has completely melted, pout it into the empty palette. This step can be quite tricky. If neatness is important to you, I recommend testing it out with a few old lipsticks, before wasting your best buys.

For me, the easiest way to pour it in was when it was still piping hot from the spoon. If you let the liquid cool down first, your lipstick will be lumpy. As you can see from the photo above, it took me a couple of attempts to get it perfect.

7. Repeat And Clean Up

After you’ve poured the lipstick in, continue melting the others. The lipstick only take minutes to set, so you don’t have to wait until they’re dry in the palette.

Repeat the process until you’re happy with what you've created. Then clean up the edges and any areas you may have spilled lipstick with q-tips.

8. Try Out

And there we have it! Your palette is complete. You've survived a near-panic attack cutting up all your favourite luxury lipsticks and developed some serious steady-hand skills from pouring it in the casing. Well done.

To show you the finished results, I decided to swatch one lipstick before I melted it. Above is a gorgeous festive red-shade that I melted in step four. Below, is the same hue, second from top. As you can see from the photos, it's just as pigmented and hasn't been damaged at all.

The only difference now is when I want to use it, I don't have to rummage through endless amounts of drawers to find it — in other words, total lipstick bliss. Try it for yourself, and happy organizing.

Images: Emma Matthews