Z Palette Review + Depotting Sleek Eyeshadow Palettes

Large Red Z Palette + 20 Magnetic Stickers

I have been lusting after a Z Palette for the longest time, and I finally bit the bullet and bought one! I bought mine from www.beautyemporium.ie, where I get a lot of stuff these days. The palette I got was the large red one, as the smaller palettes just weren't big enough for what I wanted it for - which is to depot all my Sleek eyeshadow palettes into one big palette because they're not getting used so much because it's annoying having to root through different palettes to find different colours. I'll get into how I depotted the eyeshadows in a bit, first I'll tell you my thoughts on the Z palette!

Z palettes are basically an empty make up palette, they are sometimes referred to as freedom palettes meaning that you can place any shape or size of pans in there in anyway you like. The base of the palette is magnetised, the idea being that the pans of eyeshadow pans, blush pans etc, are supposed to stick to the bottom of the palette and stay there without moving around and getting broken. The only downside to this is that a lot of eyeshadow pans wont stick as they aren't magnetised, that's why they include the magnetic stickers, which is pretty cool.

The Z palette is made of really sturdy cardboard with a clear, plastic window that you can see through. Its a lot sturdier than I thought it was going to be, and I can see that the palette is going to be able to take a bit of a bashing but you should still be careful with it if you get one of these. Id definitely say that as it is cardboard that you should keep these away from any liquids, so if you're a girl who keeps your make up in a bathroom, these probably should be kept out of there to minimise damage from water and steam. 

Now onto the depotting....

Bear in mind that this is the method of depotting that worked best for me, and what I thought was safest and easiest for Sleek eyeshadow palettes. There are tons of ways to do this that all seemed too dangerous to me, and also a lot of the time destroy the original packaging of your shadows. I wanted to keep the original packaging so that I could put the shadows back if I wasn't using them. 

What you will need:

The palette/shadows that you want to depot

Z Palette or other palette for placing shadows into

Magnetic stickers if eyeshadow pans aren't magnetised (Sleek pans aren't)

A metal nail file

A needle/clothes pin

Source of heat - I used a hairdryer as I thought this was the safest way

Method: 

1. Take your hair dryer and put on the highest heat setting. Heat the back of the palette for 20-30 seconds. This melts the glue that holds the eyeshadow pan to the palette.

2. Open the palette and examine the eyeshadow for a gap between the pan and palette where you can slide the clothes pin down into it, and gently wiggle the pin to make the gap larger.

3. Take your metal nail file and wedge it in the gap you just had the pin in. You could skip the step with the pin if you like, but I find it makes it easier to place the file in and give you a bit more room to get the pan out.

4. Really Gently, wiggle the nail file down to the bottom of the gap, and gently wiggle and lift the pan. This may take a while and it really is best to be as gentle as possible or you may break your shadows. 

As you can see from the above photo, the pan will eventually pop out. It just takes a bit of time and patience. At this stage pull off any remaining glue off the bottom of the eyeshadow pan, if its being stubborn use a cotton bud and some nail varnish remover to get it off.

So all you have to do now is carry on until all of your eyeshadows are out of their original palette and stick them in your Z palette, or onto your magnetised stickers and then into your palette and you should get something that looks like this...

Z palette with depotted Sleek shadows

In my palette I have my Sleek Storm and Oh So Special palettes, I'm planning on depotting a few more of them and sticking them in but I only have a few magnetic stickers left so I think I'll have to get some more before I depot them. I love my z palette, but I hate the way the magnetic stickers are so big and that you cant cut them smaller, because the Sleek pans are so small you can see them and it just looks messy, so I'm currently in the process of trying to find a shop near me that sells sheets of steel plated aluminium so i can make my own perfectly fitting magnets, as I've seen this being done on you tube and it seems to work pretty well, it would just be great for it to look neater. 

But that aside, I absolutely LOVE my Z palette and will definitely be getting more, I might get one of the small ones which would be perfect for my handbag so i can pick and choose what shadows I want to bring with me but for now I'm happy to have them all in one big palette. I'll really be putting how sturdy it is to the test soon as I will be doing a lot of travelling over the next month or so, incuding a few flights, so I will post more of an update on how sturdy the palette is then - but so far, so good!

So hopefully this post has been helpful, and I honestly think everyone should own a Z Palette! 

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