How I... store my pigments

Messy things, pigments.  Seriously messy.  Especially when you buy an expensive, limited edition, hard-to-get, now discontinued, highly pigmented stupidly opaque crazily hot pink one.  And spill it all over your mother's brand new cream carpet.  Not that I *ever* did that, of course.  So how do I store 'em?

Pigments.  How do you store yours?!

Pigments are fan-flippin'-tastic.  A fellow makeup-artist-in-the-making, at my very first makeup course ever, waaaaaaay back when, turned me on to these.  They can be used to make anything;  eyeshadow, body paint, lipstick, blusher, bronzer, eyeliner, mascara, you name it.  Use them dry, add water or some other mixing medium and hey presto, instant whatever-it-was-you-wanted.

OK I've given the game away now...

I have a decent enough selection of these but to be honest, I've found that the best (for normal day-to-day use) are the likes of the Barry M or the Taylor Made Minerals (who I think shut up shop, but may have been bought out since).

MAC, Illamasqua, Make Up For Ever, of course I love theirs too... but spending a fortune on them isn't strictly necessary - it depends on what you want them for, really.  A lot of loose powder formulation products have a lot of filler products (eg talc, pearl dust, mica etc) and less pure pigment.  If you want a strong "highly pigmented" end result, you need a product with a high proportion of pigment and a low (or zero) proportion of fillers.  But in the end of the day, for day-to-day use, the likes of the fantastic Barry M is highly recommended for eye shadow pigments, for example.

Anyhow, here's what I use - it's beyond simple, and it cost me zero punts, euros, no money at all*, an unused Nespresso pod holder:

Knock knock, open wide, see what's on the other side...

Ta da...

* ie assuming that you already have a Nespresso and got the welcome pack with this storage container :-)

OK all well and good for my flatter pigments (like Make Up For Ever, The Makeup Store and Face 2) or my smaller pigments (like Barry M or Taylor Made Minerals), but what about the bigger ones?

Bigger pots...

Simple - I use one of my Muji drawers - I have two large towers of these, one is for brushes (see this post for more details on brush storage and these storage options) and one is for makeup.

That's it - short and sweet.  Next week's how-to post will be a very short post on my makeup station.  Thanks for reading!