How to Make Your Ain Custom Makeup Palette

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

My Bright Spring makeup palette

My Bright Bound makeup palette

These palettes let 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 you the information you need so you tin can create a custom makeup palette for yourself (though it needn't be as big equally mine, of course – it'south specifically for you lot).

I'm going to explicate 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-fabricated palette vs customisable palette

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

Pre-made eyeshadow palette (photo by ignatov)

Pre-made eyeshadow palette (photo by ignatov)

Custom palettes are those you lot create yourself past putting products in metal pans into a magnetic palette. The colours are upwards to y'all, as is the arrangement, and you tin can remove and replace them at will.

Custom makeup palette containing eyeshadows and blushes in Soft Autumn colours

Custom makeup palette containing eyeshadows and blushes in Soft Autumn colours

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

If you accept all the powders you use together in i palette, it'south not just a much more efficient use of space, it'll besides be quicker and easier to do your makeup.

The main advantage of pre-made palettes is that they're cheaper, oft a lot cheaper. However 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 i or two colours that I use a lot, and the balance I use much less or hardly at all. Once those i or two get used upward, the balance of the palette becomes useless to me, because you tin't supervene upon them. It'south wasteful, and not skillful value for money.

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

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

You know the colours that will work for you amend 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 available from many brands. I've listed some beneath, but this is by no means an exhaustive listing.

The pans themselves can be circular, square or rectangular, and come 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 up 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 virtually frequently used for blushes, but also sometimes for eyeshadows and face powders. Pans from different brands can vary a bit from 36–37mm, but all of these products volition 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 pulverization 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 past production)

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

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

Makeup Geek blushes (44mm circular)

Nabla eyeshadows (30mm round)

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

Well-nigh of these products are in tin pans, which volition stick to a magnetic palette perfectly.

However, MAC pans are aluminium (much cheaper than tin), which are non attracted to magnets. They become around this by sticking a magnet on the back of each pan, and putting a ferrous metal in the palette instead.

The upshot of this is that MAC pans stick to MAC palettes, everyone else's stick to magnetic palettes. Yous can notwithstanding apply MAC pans in a magnetic palette, you just demand to take the magnet off the bottom of the pan and replace it with a metal sticker, which you can buy from eBay or Amazon.

Conversely, to put anything other than MAC pans into a MAC palette, y'all will have to stick magnets on the bottom of the pans, which you tin likewise buy 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 (like my Brilliant Spring palette at the meridian of this post).

Every bit a effect, you tin can fit pans of any size or shape into a freestyle palette, and more of them than into a welled palette of like dimensions.

Even so, they tend to get a lilliputian messier than a welled palette, and if you're putting pans right next to each other, you lot can become some cross-contamination of colours.

Hither are some of the many available:

australis-palettes.jpg

Australis palettes

coastal-scents-palettes.jpg

Coastal Scents palettes

colour-pop-palettes.jpg

Colour Popular palettes

mug-palettes.jpg

Makeup Geek palettes

salt-palettes.jpg

Salt New York palettes

z-palettes.jpg

Z palettes

I've noted the number of standard eyeshadows (26mm round pans) that will fit in each palette for easy comparison, but of class you lot tin 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 accept slots (wells) in them where you identify your makeup pans (like the Soft Fall palette pictured earlier).

They accept the advantage of keeping your makeup neatly organised, and too keeping the pans separated so cross-contamination of colours is less likely.

However, they do limit you on the size and shape of pans you tin keep in them.

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

In my own kit, almost every pressed pulverisation 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

8l-palette.jpg

8 wells

12l-palette.jpg

12 wells

15l-palette.jpg

15 wells

26 & 37mm well palettes

For simplicity, I refer below to these two sizes of pans as "pocket-size" and "big", though of class smaller and larger pans exist.

3l-4s-palette.jpg

4 small & 3 large wells

3l-5s-palette.jpg

5 small & iii large wells

2l-6s-palette.jpg

6 small & 2 large wells

2l-9s-palettes.jpg

9 small & 2 big wells

9l-12s-palettes.jpg

12 pocket-size & ix big wells

6l-16s-palettes.jpg

sixteen small & half-dozen large wells

Putting your palette together

Yous can, of course, buy any colours yous like and put them together however your center desires!

Only for those of y'all who adopt a niggling guidance, here are a few suggestions:

  • a palette with a mirror can exist helpful if you do makeup on the become

  • a palette with a clear chapeau is useful if you take multiple palettes, then you lot can see what'due south in each

  • choose a range of eyeshadow depths from calorie-free to dark (within the value range of your tone) if y'all want to create dimension or drama

  • similarly, cull some matte eyeshadows, since it's very difficult to create dimension with shimmer shadows alone

  • don't put calorie-free colours right next to dark ones in your palette, if possible, as they tin can go contaminated and dirty

  • an eyeshadow in a taupe (greyness-brown) from your tone is my favourite multitasker, bully for shading the socket of the center, filling in the brows, and even contouring the face

  • an eyeshadow in a dark colour from your tone can double as a liner

I hope this information helps y'all in creating a makeup palette that is truly customised and perfect just for you.

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

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How to Make Your Own Custom Makeup Palette: With only the colours you will actually use!