May 27, 2016

Making Your Own Makeup Organizers

Nicole lifestyle handmade, tutorial

I’m not super into makeup; for that department you’d have to talk to my sister. However, despite the fact that I never used to wear makeup, and I still don’t even wear it daily, over the past few years I have apparently managed to build up a bit of a collection, as my rather disorganized makeup cupboard was clearly showing me.

I used to have a drawer to store all my lotions and potions, so three old kleenex boxes fit neatly into the drawer and were a perfect (and free!) organizing solution. I’ve since moved though, and now have a medicine cabinet to hold my makeup. The kleenex boxes just weren’t cutting it anymore, so I decided that it was time for my non-organized cabinet to get an overhaul. I grabbed some spare glass jars to hold my brushes and mascara etc. and found a few small boxes and containers to hold the rest. However, the two items that still didn’t have a good home were my lipsticks and my new eyeshadow colours.

About a month ago, I invested in some nice, Canadian made, mineral eyeshadow, by Pure Anada. I became aware of the fact that many of the ingredients in makeup are not all they seem when I read Wear No Evil a few years ago, and so I have slowly been switching my makeup over to pure, natural and organic makeups ever since. The last step in that process was the eyeshadow. The cool thing about Pure Anada is that their pressed eyeshadow powders are in metal containers, and their palettes are magnetized, so it makes it very easy to create a custom palette and to replace them when you run out of a colour. However, the case was designed to hold 8 colours and I only had 5, so this left the palette almost half empty. I may be slightly obsessed with how things look (ok maybe a lot obsessed), so a half empty palette just wouldn’t do. I thought, how hard could it be to make one myself? Well, with a bit of trial and error, I ended up with a pretty good case. (And I gave the original palette to my sister, who had bought more colours than me!)

The other thing I needed an organizing solution for, was my lipstick. My first thought was to get a vintage lipstick stand, however my internet search didn’t bring up any that 1.) were big enough to hold 10 tubes, and 2.) I liked the look of. (See, there is my obsession with how things look again!) The next thought was to purchase one of those acrylic lipstick organizers. I love the look of those as they remind me of the accessories of the Art Deco and Mid Century eras, however, no one in our town sells anything like that, and as I am not the most patient of people when it comes to organizing things (get it done!!) I didn’t want to wait until I next time I went to the city. I also thought that, since I had had success in making an eyeshadow case, I might as well try my hand at a lipstick organizer too. (You may be wondering, also, why a self professed non make-up wearer has 10 tubes of lipstick. Well, I had a few colours, and one day, when I was going to buy some new colours, there was a buy 2 get 1 free sale, so I bought 4 and got 2 free! Sometimes these things just happen. . . )

Anyways, here is, sort of, how I made the two organizers.

Sorry I was so excited to reorganize and get started, I forgot to take a before picture. And I tried to take pictures of the process of making the makeup organizers, and then I got busy and forgot to take them along the way. Oops.

The first thing I did was lay out the eyeshadow, and measure the size needed. It just so turned out that they fit perfectly onto an old magnet I had. (You know the kinds that realtors or museums etc, hand out to you? Usually they are business card size.)

I measured the magnet and cut out pieces of stiff cardboard to create a little box. I glued and taped the pieces together.

I decided to cover the cases in some vintage clip art. As this project was just for my own personal use, I googled “vintage hats Sears catalogue” and came up with these images that I printed out onto some 8.5×11 scrapbook paper.

Once I had the decorative paper, I traced the box and lid, cutting it all out in one piece, making sure to add a bit of an allowance to wrap around the edge. Then I decoupaged the paper onto the box. One of the errors I made was to not allow enough to wrap the lid (oops!), so I had to cut separate pieces to finish the inside of the lid. That’s why it is made of a few pieces. It gives it more of a decoupage-y, collage-y feel though right? 😉

Then I glued in the magnet, and put the eyeshadow inside. The only thing I do not like about it, is that the lid doesn’t close tightly, as the paper gives it enough bounce to pop open easily. I think I am going to find another small piece of magnet to attach to the lid so it will stay closed. Right now it’s fine when it’s in my cupboard, but if I am traveling I have to put an elastic around it to keep it shut.

As for the lipstick holder, I followed the same method of measuring the lipstick and determining how large each cubicle needed to be, and then cutting out the cardboard and making a box. Then I measured the inside of the box, and cut the divider pieces, two for the length and three across the width.

These I cut halfway up at one inch intervals across, (which I conveniently don’t have a picture of) so that the pieces would slide together to create a grid. I hope you know what I mean?

Then I covered and decoupaged the box and the grid pieces individually. Once dry, I slid the grid into the box, and added the lipstick.

Perfecto! Actually, the one thing I didn’t remember was that I should have cut my grid pieces a bit shorter, as they stick up just a smidgen above the box. This is because I cut them at the same height as the box, the decoupage added a bit of height, and the grid doesn’t fit tightly. Maybe someday when I am feeling ambitious, I will take it apart and cut them down a bit. But, in the meantime it works perfectly.

So, how do you organize your makeup? Do you like the insides of your cupboards to be as pretty as the outsides too?