How To Fix Cracked or Broken Eyeshadow

After lost luggage, damaged property is next on the list of airline travel woes. For those of you traveling with cosmetics, this can be particularly frustrating especially if the cosmetics were pricey. Much to my dismay, during my New Year's vacation this year I arrived in St. Thomas to discover that my eyeshadow travel palette had been destroyed during the flight!

Take a look at the first picture - as you can probably see, it looks like several of the colors have cracked and others, as if they have literally been vaporized. As you can probably imagine, my heart sank. Fortunately, I decided to help others who may have found themselves in a similar situation. Rather than taking my frustrations out on the airline and vowing to never fly with them again, or going out and buying spending another fortune on a replacement palette, I took matters into my own hands. While it may look like all is lost, there is a very simple fix for broken eyeshadows!

What will you need?

1. Your broken eyeshadows, however many there may be.

2. A coin that is the same size or smaller than the eyeshadow you are fixing.

3. A tissue or piece of thin fabric (polyester, jersey-knit fabrics and cotton work the best. Don't use anything thick and unruly like wool, terrycloth or felt!).

4. A small amount of every day rubbing alcohol.

5. A small spray bottle or eyedropper.

6. This project can get rather messy so I suggest laying down newspaper.

7. Optional - a craft spatula for moving the product. For the purposes of this tutorial, I simply used an index card and it worked just fine for me. You could also use a spoon if you choose to.

Now what do I do?

1. Push as much of the broken color back into the pot as possible. This is to salvage as much of the product as possible! If the color has mixed too much with other colors, don't worry about this too much. As you can see by my photos, this was certainly the case for me in a few instances. Save what you can, but don't worry too much about separating mixed colors. The sore eyes and gray hair you'll sprout as a result aren't worth the effort.

2. Fill the spray bottle with a little bit of the rubbing alcohol. You do not need a lot of rubbing alcohol for this. If you are using an eyedropper, pick up a tiny amount of the alcohol in the dropper.

3. Holding the bottle about 5-6 inches away from the eyeshadow, spray the alcohol onto the broken eyeshadow 1-2 times. The shadow does not need to be soaked, just lightly dampened with the alcohol. If you are using an eye dropper, drop 2-4 drops of alcohol directly into the shadow.

4. Lay the tissue or fabric over the top of the broken shadow.

5. Press the coin into the shadow on top of the tissue or fabric. It is very important that you don't put the coin directly onto the shadow, or you could end up with a big mess on your hands. Press firmly.

6. After pressing the coin and tissue or fabric into the shadow for about 10 full seconds, pull your hand away and gently peel away the tissue or fabric with the coin. Try not to lift the tissue directly off of the shadow, as this tends to cause the broken shadow to stick to it instead of staying in the pot.

7. Voila! You have efficiently and inexpensively mended your eyeshadow. Repeat as many times as needed for any one of your shadows.