Thursday, February 20, 2014

Pressing Pigments


It's HARD. I actually hated it. I did learn a little by trial and error along the way. Messy, messy error... But I don't think I got the hang of it. The pressed shadows that I ended up with dried somewhat loose and I wouldn't dare rub an eye shadow brush in them too hard let alone travel with them!
First I attempted to re-press an existing shadow. I've seen this as "so easy!" and a fix for broken shadows (Google: "fix broken powder compact"...*eye roll*) I bought TKB Trading's pressing medium. Funny thing about this first one. It was so wet and so messy, but in the end it's the only shadow that looks semi-professional. I thought I added way too much pressing liquid, but it is much stiffer than the other ones where I added less, so perhaps I was on to something... 



1. The eye shadow palette I scraped out.











2. Dry powder dotted with pressing liquid.













3. Paste-like.













4. And subsequently very messy and hard to press.











5. I lost a lot because it was so wet.










6. When it had dried some I added a few drops of rubbing alcohol and re-pressed. This is before re-pressing.












1. Enter sniffie bags. TKB recommended a small bag to mix pressing medium and powders.















2. It worked much better for getting a smooth consistency. But after the previous one I was hesitant to add a lot of pressing liquid. It was a little dry.













3. Overloaded before pressing.
















4. Pressing VERY HARD. haha!













5. Pressed. But you can see it still looks kind of loose! Not enough pressing medium I guess...









All in all, not a success. This needs a lot more play time to perfect! But that is the thing, I don't want to waste too many micas or loose eye shadows in pursuit of this. I feel like I tried all the tricks, pressing medium, high alcohol content rubbing alcohol, baggies, special presser, stiff nice tins that don't bend, and still just sub-par results. Maybe it's me.

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