How to Make Your Own Custom Makeup Palette

If I've ever applied your makeup, you will have seen that I continue 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 Spring makeup palette

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

In this mail service I want to give you the data you need so you can create a custom makeup palette for yourself (though it needn't be as big as mine, of course – it'south specifically for you).

I'g going to explicate why I prefer them, how to cull (and where to purchase) your palette and the products to put in information technology, and how to put information technology all together to create your perfect palette.

Pre-made palette vs customisable palette

The palettes that you lot're probable already familiar with are pre-made. The colours in them have been chosen by the brand, and are almost ever in pans that have been glued into the palette, and then they tin't be removed or replaced. What you see is what you get.

Pre-made eyeshadow palette (photo by ignatov)

Pre-made eyeshadow palette (photo by ignatov)

Custom palettes are those you 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 yous can remove and supersede 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

Whatever pressed pulverization in a pan tin be put into your palette. And so yous might choose to create an eyeshadow palette, or a blush palette, or a combination, and you tin likewise get pans of bronzers, highlighters, powder foundations, setting powders and more. (You can as well buy cream products in pans, only mixing pulverisation and cream products in the aforementioned palette is a recipe for disaster).

If you have all the powders you use together in one palette, it's not only a much more than efficient use of space, information technology'll also be quicker and easier to do your makeup.

The main advantage of pre-fabricated palettes is that they're cheaper, often a lot cheaper. However that'due south only relevant if yous're actually going to use all the products in the palette.

In my experience with eyeshadow palettes, there'll be one or two colours that I utilize a lot, and the rest I use much less or hardly at all. One time those one or two get used up, the rest of the palette becomes useless to me, because you lot can't replace them. It's wasteful, and not skilful value for coin.

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

Simply if you've had a personal color analysis and know your tone, you practice know what you lot're doing.

You know the colours that volition piece of work for you amend than any makeup brand.

Where to purchase 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 ways an exhaustive list.

The pans themselves tin can exist round, square or rectangular, and come in a range of sizes. The well-nigh 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 also sometimes for eyeshadows and confront 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

Coastal Scents blushes and bronzers

Graftobian eyeshadows and powder foundations

La Femme blushes and eyeshadows

Sugarpill eyeshadows

Yaby highlighters and bronzers, powder foundations and setting pulverisation

Other sizes

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

Inglot (rectangular, size varies by 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 round)

Nabla eyeshadows (30mm round)

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

Most of these products are in tin pans, which will 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 back 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'due south stick to magnetic palettes. You tin all the same use MAC pans in a magnetic palette, y'all just need to take the magnet off the bottom of the pan and replace information technology with a metallic sticker, which you tin purchase 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 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 Bright Spring palette at the height of this postal service).

As a effect, you can fit pans of whatever size or shape into a freestyle palette, and more of them than into a welled palette of similar dimensions.

Still, they tend to get a little messier than a welled palette, and if you're putting pans right adjacent to each other, y'all can get some cross-contamination of colours.

Here are some of the many bachelor:

australis-palettes.jpg

Australis palettes

coastal-scents-palettes.jpg

Coastal Scents palettes

colour-pop-palettes.jpg

Colour Pop 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 volition fit in each palette for easy comparison, but of course you can put pans in them of any size and shape.

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

Welled magnetic palettes

Welled palettes accept slots (wells) in them where you place your makeup pans (like the Soft Fall palette pictured earlier).

They accept the reward of keeping your makeup neatly organised, and also keeping the pans separated so cross-contagion of colours is less probable.

Still, they do limit you on the size and shape of pans you can go along in them.

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

In my own kit, almost every pressed pulverization 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, then 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

fifteen wells

26 & 37mm well palettes

For simplicity, I refer below to these 2 sizes of pans as "small-scale" and "large", though of course smaller and larger pans exist.

3l-4s-palette.jpg

4 pocket-sized & 3 large wells

3l-5s-palette.jpg

5 small & three large wells

2l-6s-palette.jpg

6 pocket-sized & 2 large wells

2l-9s-palettes.jpg

9 small & 2 large wells

9l-12s-palettes.jpg

12 small & nine large wells

6l-16s-palettes.jpg

xvi small & 6 big wells

Putting your palette together

Y'all can, of form, buy any colours you like and put them together however your middle desires!

Only for those of you who prefer a lilliputian guidance, here are a few suggestions:

  • a palette with a mirror tin be helpful if you practise makeup on the become

  • a palette with a articulate lid is useful if you have multiple palettes, and so y'all can see what'south in each

  • choose a range of eyeshadow depths from light to night (within the value range of your tone) if you lot 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 light colours right next to dark ones in your palette, if possible, as they can get contaminated and muddy

  • 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

  • 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 exist posting articles about my makeup kit for each tone, along with suggested palettes and eyeshadow looks, to brand information technology even easier.

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